Winter's Oath
by DreamEscape16
Summary: "I will protect you." he declared out his mission and held her close as he shielded her with his body heat against the winter storm. He knew this task wasn't going to be easy, but she needed him, and for once the soldier obeyed his heart. Pre- Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
1. Chapter 1 : Prologue

**Winter's Oath**

**All characters belong to Marvel Comics**

**I own nothing**

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><p><strong><em>+ Prologue +<br>_**

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><p><em>Saint Petersburg, <em>_Санкт__-__Петербург__, Russia_

Snow fell against the glass planes of the frosted window; steady and tranquil. A faint glow of amber from dimming candlelight flickered against the wall; pieces of plaster were scattered across hardwood, and dark puddles of spilled maroon had collected underneath vacant shadows of the room.

The smell of death cloaked over every corner, the echoes of gun fire consumed the deary silence, and obscured shapes loomed in the white sanctuary of winter around her had become a dark, shattered place of terror.

She was the only survivor of her family. She was the only witness of the invasive attack that was said to be a curse to her father's blood line.

She never had imagined that she would be staring into the void of death; curled underneath the dining room table; with one shaking hand gripping the wooden leg, and the other hand was cradled over the gaping bullet wound which had compromised her tensed stomach.

Her father was the prime target, and her mother and young sister had just gotten in the way of line of fire.

The girl felt the sniper slug and glass shards had pierced through the layers of her muscle, puncturing her internal organs until she had become a victim of the coldness searing into her rattled bones, and numbness weaving the blood in her pulsing veins.

She never cried.

It was almost like her emotions had become frozen. Her caramel eyes darkened from shafts of light, and delicate pink shaded lips grew into a still expression. Her traumatized mind conceived illusions of dark wraiths lurking outside the borders of her home;, daring her to move outside. Instead, she kept a frightened gaze locked on the tarnished silver locket in front of her quivering frame. Smears of blood were stained on the chain, but she knew it belonged to her; she had become the new owner of her family's heirloom when her mother pulled it off her neck before the sniper bullet had sliced through her heart.

Panting out a heavy, strained breath, the child reached for the locket, forcing the muscles in her arms to twist as she grasped the necklace. Without any hesitation, she bolted out the back kitchen door, never looking back at the bodies of her family.

Wincing, she moved aimlessly against the sables of thick darkness, ignoring the freezer burn on the soles of her bare feet while she wrapped her arms over her chest, dragging her small body in staggered footing over the mounts of thick snow.

It felt like death was hesitating as the flakes landed in her long brown strands of hair, but she kept on pushing herself, avoiding the areas of the fresh tire tracks etched in the snow. The biting gusts of the moaning wind slashed over her pale blemished skin of her cheeks. Her lips were chilled, and her voice was locked away as she tried to call out for help. She halted in her tracks and listened to the ear-splitting sound of terror knelling in the snowy air. And she wondered if a monster lurked in the pitch of darkness, waiting to devour her weakened form.

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><p>"No." A shuddering, and breathless voice hollered in the thick obscurity of the shadowed over barren driveway leading up to the division of a mansion and barn.<p>

The thumping of boots sloshing in slushy puddles of melting snow echoed through the muffled silence. A man dressed in black suit frantically glanced over his shoulder, daring himself to stare at a tall figure impending in the ambiance of shadow.

A pair burning blue eyes captured the glow of dingy lamplight and a loud and abrasive growl escaped from its throat.

"Stay away from me," he yelled out, and then scrambled onto his feet, crashing into a pile of trash cans and landing flat on his face.

He lifted his scraped chin, shivering as he stared with bewilderment at the dark, imposing figure stalked closer.

Blinking the pain out of his eyes as his blood turned cold and air rushed through his lungs.

He lay on the ground dazed and frozen in the glare; he gasped and struggled to regain balance. The world spun world around, vision swam into a crimson haze. He blinked the tears out of his eyes and dared himself once again to stare up at the nightmare mirroring his gaze.

"Why is he doing this? I followed my orders. I kept my mouth shut." he managed to wheeze out, blood leaking from his swollen mouth.

The attacker said nothing, just glared down at him with murderous glacial embers of molten dread.

A flash of headlights reflected over the white ground, revealing the ghostly visage of a man garbed fully in Kevlar combat gear towered over the target like a wolf to a cornered rabbit-he was barely visible to the darkness.

He had brown shoulder length that was leaned and draped over his jaw. He wore a mask that covered a portion of his face, and his vibrant, soulless and unnerved blue eyes were glimmering with intensity of a lurid hunter.

His metal hand screeched with inorganic, and mechanical noises as it clamped over sub machine gun when he brushed his gloved hand over the breech of his weapon, and lowered the muzzle suppressor over the man's throat.

"I know who you are...The Winter Soldier," The target choked as powerful hands coiled over his neck and squeezed pressure against his jugular. His own hands grabbed the alloy plates of a metal arm and pulled, he was trying to free himself from the clutches of merciless Russian assassin.

He squeezed hard on metal, digging his finger nails into serrated edges of metal, but the attacker was relentless and pressed his leather glove hard over his mouth, smothering the breath out of him.

The Winter Soldier's icy blue eyes grew vicious, inhumane and cold, it ripped his shirt off with one swipe of a knife, and then fired the machine gun, and the caliber bullet exploded in the man's chest.

Agony erupted through every fiber of his body; the man's head smacked backwards, his teeth stained with blood.

Mustering up his strength, he fought to stay alert, unable to move-breathe. Panic invaded his racing heart, blood churned in his veins. "When day HYDRA's reign of terror will end!" he roared, his voice fading, and eyes fluttering to the back of his skull.

Another clap of thunder escaped the gun, and the man became limp as a cold fish. His body flopped slightly against the snow before he released a faint breath.

The deaden eyes of the predator trained over a heap of snow, locking on the blood trail, each drop leading to a cluster of ice encased evergreens.

An emotionless smirk stifled over his chilled lips, and one eye looked through the scope of the weapon-aiming the red marker on a small child trudging frantically through the snow, his finger-instead of firing a directive kill shot, he lowered the weapon, pointing the muzzle to the ground, and then he stared intently at the spatters of blood that had painted over the snow. Then, he saw something that made his frozen heart shudder against his armor. A body of the child was laying on the ground, her dark locks fanned across slush and dirt, and her chest was heaving out labored exhales of forced breath.

Sucking in a deep breath, the Winter Soldier approached the wounded girl cautiously, his heavy boots crunched in the snow, and feral blue eyes narrowed on her pale face. Silently, he lowered his weapon to his side, and tentatively crouched down next to her laden body.

Lifting his head, he saw the distant glow of firelight from an explosion. He fell into a trance, staring at the smoke rising from the blown out windows of a building, and acutely listened to the echoes of straits from sirens.

Feeling, a brush of humanity creep over his rugged skin, he gently dragged his metal knuckles across the snow, and lightly caressed her cheek. He constantly scanned his intense gaze over the area, searching for someone to aid him. He was created not to feel-not to show compassion, but staring down at the innocent girl struggling for her survival caused him to breakthrough the void of his programming and become human again. He wanted to save her.

Mutely, he bowed his head, his ratty locks of dark hair draped over his frozen cheeks, and he removed his mask, tossing it aside and listening to clang when it hit the ground.

He brushed a soothing motion of his lips over her forehead, allowing a wet heat to penetrate over her pale skin, and he kissed her, giving her his warmth. It felt natural to him.

"Don't be afraid, I'm not going to hurt you," he spoke in Russian, sliding his hand over the shard of glass sticking out of her right side, he yanked it out of her while keeping his mouth latched onto her skin.

The child snapped her brown eyes open, and let out a painful scream of anguish. Tears solidified over her cheeks, and blood dripped from the corner of her full red lips. She gasped, and thrashed in panic, but he kept her stable when she lifted her gaze up, staring at him with bewildered, watery eyes.

His hair was thick and rich, disheveled chestnut cascading off the planes of his shoulders and off his face-displaying the youthful, chiseled lines of his youthful, rugged face. The warm glow enhanced the details of his gentle pale azure eyes,-as clear as a December sky and his well-defined jaw line smooth from a shave. His beautifully curved, full lips held the faint essence of a human smile, and metal hand cupped the side of her delicate face. "Are you ..." she managed to say in broken voice, rubbing her shaky fingers over his mouth. "Going to kill me?"

He grabbed her thin wrist, gently, and pulled her hand back. "No." he answered with a sullen voice, and wrapped his broad arms over her small frame, lifting her carefully up from the ground, and cradling her securely against the armor of his broad chest. He watched her eyes close, and her lips pressed over his heart. She felt safe with him. "I'm not going to hurt you..."

He settled his irked blue eyes over the area, turning his head and looked intensely over his rigid shoulder—two men garbed in leather stood in front of black van with automatic rifles slung over the broad span of their shoulders.

He swallowed thickly, steadying his breath—knowing that it was almost time for him to return to the ice and wait in a silent coffin until the he becomes needed again.

He nodded responsibly at their barking voices, and he advanced closer to the vehicle with methodical steps.

The Winter Soldier kept on looking down at the child nuzzled safe in his strong arms, and he knew that he would never lay his eyes on her ever- again.

He was never a chance to have contact with humanity beyond the barriers of HYDRA. He was a weapon created for a purpose to destroy life and not to shield it with his own mortality. Feeling, her shiver against the Kevlar armor encased over his chest, made the bones of his rib cage cramped up with sickening and harrowing tension as he vanished into the falling snow.

The locket gripped her hands, dangled off her limp fingers as it threatened to fall, but he caught the necklace with his bionic hand and placed it securely over her chest.

The man deep inside of the layers of the assassin wanted to tell her everything was going to be alright, but his lips were sealed, and his heart frozen as well. He placed her laden body carefully into the red stained hands of HYDRA.

He climbed into the back of the van and sat in the seat as silence cloaked over his menacing semblance.

Instinctively, as the assassin kept his trained his ghostly eyes locked on little girl's face resting flat on the seat in front of him, a part of him felt the iciness of a wave of uncertainty lap over him.

He looked down at his 9 mm silencer pistol strapped to his right thigh hostler, and then he took a deep breath as his metal fingers clutched the weapon and within seconds of pulling the trigger, the driver's head smashed against the steering wheel and the vehicle loss its traction as tires swerved until the front of van collided with a tree. Seizing his moment, he climbed over the seat and wrapped his arms around her.

Narrowing his blue eyes down at her angelic, paled face, the Winter Soldier gave his oath to the child in a gentle cadence in his raspy and deep voice, "I will protect you." he declared out his mission in a muffled voice and held her close as he shielded her with his body heat against the winter storm.

He knew this task wasn't going to be easy, but she needed him, and for once the programmed soldier obeyed the one thing he thought he'd never feel again...His heart.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

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><p>His heart was pounding wildly in his ribs. The bright shades of dangerous red coated thickly over his enraged vision; the disjointed images of metal twisted limbs invaded his torrent mind.<p>

The vague stench of compromised gasoline was pouring out the vehicle's tank hit his nose. He trudged further away from the smoldering wreckage; leaving three lifeless bodies of HYDRA operatives dangling out the van's windows.

_It was a brutal attack. He used his combat knife to slice their throats; he made the assault quick and painless. His metal hand crushed bones as one of the men tried to reach for the girl, but he protected her like a menacing wolf defending his wounded cub. He was vicious, lethal and savagely efficient._

_The assassin knew his opponents' weakness and used them as his advantage during the assault. When the screams of anguish finally died out, he had wrapped his arms securely around the girl, holding her into the next of his armored chest, and smashed his boots through the back window, rolling into a snow back, and he kept her little, injured body smug and protected against his Kevlar vest._

Those were only moments before, he had moved with methodical to clear path, bringing her away from danger. He turned his head; tresses of his dark strands lashed his frozen cheeks. He glanced over his armored shoulder, locking his feral, pale blue eyes on the target, and aimed the muzzle of his gun at the puddle of gasoline. He felt his gloved finger taut over the trigger, and then he fired a untraceable shell against the metal back door, and watched sparks of amber flicker into the spilling liquid.

Within a few long seconds of waiting; he listened to the deafening sound of thunder of an explosion vibrating the frozen ground beneath his boots.

The Winter Soldier parted his chilled lips, drawing out crystallized breath in front of him. He thumped his heavy combat boots over the amounts of snow, keeping his metal hand settled on her bullet wound. He was so focused on her injuries that he didn't feel the warm trickles of blood dripping from the crown of his head, right eye and down his chiseled, broad jaw.

He had a massive, deep gouge etched in the blemished skin. The thralls of pain had seemed to grow still; he slogged his exhausted and throbbing body against the violent slashes of freezing rain pelting over the exposed and redden skin off his bicep, searing merciless into the sliced muscle where a knife penetrated through the layers of leather during his attack.

Over the years of being stuck in a prison of inorganic ice, he had grown to become immune to the sensations of pain, his body was abused to every level of torture in the Red Room, and his blood always ran cold in his veins.

It was unsettling to feel like he had been carrying out his missions as a mindless husk, allowing HYDRA to devour and rip out his soul and turn him into rabid beast.

It was condemning, inhumane and wrenching to know that he had wasted most of his vitality in the body of an abomination created to obey commands.

He didn't want to become frozen in time again, he wanted to feel human again, and to break free from the corruption programmed in his damaged mind.

_Monsters are created not to feel,_ he thought, lumbering forward and through the desolated area of black pine trees, contorted branches encased with ice and shaped a dome like covering for protection.

Carefully, he placed the girl on the ground while removing his leather jacket, and covering her limp frame, placing her head on a snow pile his hand shoved underneath her messy brown locks. He felt his lips contain a frown when he noticed a blue tinge coloring on her delicate face.

"Hey," he muttered in Russian, soft, rough strains in his broken voice. He reached over her neck with his real hand, and felt along her jugular, a fire of relief entered him when he felt a slight pulse move against his fingers.

"Can you hear me?"

She was still, frozen against the ground and fading. He bit down on his bottom lip, tasting the copper tang of blood wash over the walls of his throat as he swallowed. 'Focus, soldier. This child's life is in your hands. Do not fail her.' he thought harshly.

Growling, he fumbled for his knife, his intent blue eyes scanned over the ground frantically. "Where, Where is it?" he discharged out a snarl, and seethed hot breath against the spaces of his clenched teeth. The weapon had been behind him. He turned around and searched for the glimmering blade in the thick whiteness. His metal hand scraped over the ground, and alloy plates brushed along her arm, cold and bloody as he grasped the spine of his knife.

Without any hesitation, he ripped open her blood stained shirt, yanked the material clean off and roved his hard stare over her wounded stomach, the swelling had increased around wound, tarnished muscle and the bullet was threatening to sink deeper into her body.

He stared blankly at the gaping hole painted with blood, settling his hand on her chest. Her breath was growing faint.

Continuing to stare down at the girl, he stood at his full height of five-eleven and silently moved his head as his severe blue eyes skimmed over the icebound area for reflections of headlights. When he felt no sense of danger prickling in his veins, he crashed to his knees and rubbed the cold blade over her skin, immediately her ribs jolted, but she remained unconscious and unaware of his obscured presence.

"I'm going to remove the bullet out of you," he whispered with a croaky voice, fastening his lips into a tight line, and then slid the jagged edge of his knife under the marred skin, carefully digging into muscle of her tiny midsection.

The muscles coiled with distress, but he was benevolent. He felt the bullet rising from the narrow space, dark maroon leaked out of the exposed hole. He swallowed through the dryness aching in his throat and kept the clarity of his focus on her fluttering eyelids. He was never meant to feel, but gazing at the pain shrouding over this child's body made a throb enter his heart. He wanted to cling back onto the lifeline of humanity again.

The soldier licked the coldness off his numbing lips. He stroked his fingers through her brown hair, calming down her heart rate as the blade cut into another layer of skin, and removed the bullet, flipping the metal casting with the tip of knife into the snow. Something, triggered in him. A part of a distant memory of doing this, a lifetime before everything fell in blank darkness. He saved a life once, a young man wounded in chest; he gave him peace as shrapnel became a poison in the youth, but he was battle-hardened, fearless and pushed his limits as he carried the boy across countryside on his shoulders, and bought the soldier to a safe house for medical assistance.

Now, he was saving a life again, wearing a different uniform, but feeling the same sensations of worry etch over the barriers of his heart. His stomach begun to eat itself, and trepidation pounding vexatious against his skull. He exhaled roughly, his breath catching the frigid air permeating the area.

_'Maybe I'm still human after all?'_

Gently, he wrapped the piece of leather from his jacket over the opened wound, applying whatever amounts of heat he could muster up over the frigid skin. "Stay with me," he urged, biting down hard on the tip of his tongue, swallowing blood and watching her chest faint rise and fall. It was the only sign that revealed to him that the child was still alive, barely, but functional enough for him to bring her to a safe house.

Silently, he took out a pair of inferred goggles from a pouch located on his left side. He adjusted them quickly over his face, blocking out the distant light from his blue eyes, and turned his neck, staring at the vacant area, anticipating intimate danger, his muscles tensed as he curled his gloved fingers over the handle of his knife, hunching his shoulders, and attacking stance.

Everything was burning in his systems as he sensed the encroaching presence of HYDRA closing on his position.

Gathering enough details for his assault, he straightened to his feet, his shadowing towering over her listless form.

He clenched his metal knuckles, making blood depart from the ridges and land in the snow. He tried to remain absolute focused on the situation, but a few sudden waves of static had begun to filter through the cervices of his mind, creating instability in his flow of thoughts and raw saw flashes of dark faces, heart rates on EKG machines, and felt the chimeras of past anguish consume every fiber of his body.

_'Focus on the mission.'_

Memories started to overlap, inorganic, malicious voices of lifeless husks droned in his pounding ears. It had forced his mind to shut down, almost like a program, but he struggled through the systemic tortures and the mindless abuse he had faced in a red lit room consisting of four cement walls, leather restraints bolted into ground, and a bucket of murky water. The Red Room. The prison where the strengths of humanity was butchered and reattached by threads for handlers to pull as strings.

Screeching out in tyranny of horror, he'd lost his balance and crashed to the ground, placing his hands over the shells of his ears, trying to block out the tantalizing noises.

His bones started to jostle in the wake of distress and his heart throbbed as he thrashed wildly as red markers from sniper rifles painted his armored chest with dots. He was slipping back into the void, not realizing at the microchip planted in his infrared goggles that caused him to reenter back into a stage of a mind-numbing relapse.

The world was spinning around him; his movements were erratic, unstable and ferocious. He crawled on his belly, and screamed out his sharp cries of agony. Something had invaded his body, making his insides burn, something cruel and familiar. It permeated through his bones, his blood and internal organs. He tried to push his weight close to her, he wanted to protect her. He wanted to trust himself again.

His metal hand reached out to grab her tiny hand, but the amalgamated, invasive fragments of his wrecked mind were growing spastic, his pants of breath were heavy coattails and heart rate increasing rapidly until he collapsed down hard next to the child, with a heaving gasp, not releasing his grip from her hand while ignoring the inferno flare in his skull.

A pair of tactical boots crunched vehemently in the snow, and halted in front of the two bodies. The shadow was medium height, good muscle mass and fully garbed in black combat gear. He lifted his black tinted goggles and narrowed his dark wolfish brown eyes at the fallen soldier.

Shaking his head with disappointment, the operative pressed the com link wedged in his ear, "Sir, we found the asset. The device worked just enough to shut him down. He has taken out three agents and he's not alone." He paused in his snide words, and stared ruefully down at the unconscious child with a dangerous gleam twisting in his eyes.

"It appears that your loyal dog as found a little brat, she's wounded, do you want me end her pain?" He huffed lowly, his lips contained a dark smirk. He aimed his rifle directly at the girl's head. His finger slowly pushed back the trigger. "Just give me the order for the capture or execution sir..."


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

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><p>"...Execution."<p>

Before the brutish, American HYDRA operative received the clarification of his order; he nudged the muzzle of his automatic wrathfully against the girl's face. His chilled lips contained a sinister grin of amusement as he relished the thought of staring at macabre sight of fresh maroon painted over the white frozen ground, seeping from her body.

He was ruthless when it came to ending life. His dark brown eyes became flares of black; and his narrow structured face had flexed when he listened to the spastic buzzing noises of the sound frequencies from his commanding superior. The director.

"Sir?" he grumbled pressing his finger over the com link. He let out half of a growl. "Understood."

With a fuse impatience ebbing in his veins, the operative was soon distracted for a mere instant before the grinding noise of cybernetic alloy plates scraped in his ear drums.

The agent lost his footing as icy fear raked over him, he stared down at the contorting digits of the stirring 'asset' clasped over the nose of the rifle, twisting and bending the steel until the weapon was yanked out of his chilled fingertips and he watched to land topside in the mounds of snow.

"Son of bitch," the agent swore irritably. His hands fumbled over his armored vest, almost clawing frantically, as he searched in the hostler pouches for a smaller firearm. He knew within a second's timing of training his handgun at the laden child that his life was now a prime target for the Winter Soldier. Sweat begun to depart from his spiked hairline, and his fingers betrayed their steadiness. "Whoa, stand down, soldier." he calmly addressed, lifting his hand up. "This doesn't concern you. I'm not going to harm the girl." He could sense the urging pulse of murderous indent rising in the other man's veins.

Gulping down heavy amounts of cold air, he withdrew a step back, carefully, and kept his brown eyes fixed on the assassin. He wanted to stay alive.

Intimating boot-steps crunched in the snow, and he heard the pulse of his heart beat consuming his ears when he chanced a quick glance at the man he was aiming his gun to discharge bullet into his chest.

Quickly in a heart beat, he pressed the com link, and panted out a crystallized breath. "Sir, we got a problem." He spoke in lowly and grindy voice, gritting his teeth, while he began to countermeasure his fervent steps. "The asset is awake. Repeat. The asset is awake." he issued with huffs of cold air numbing his lungs.

Keeping his dark eyes settled on the assassin, he pulled out a breeching loaded weapon, and fired a bright flare into the darkened sky to signal the other agents of his strike team.

In seconds the entire area was lit with a crimson glow.

Snow crackled under the weight of his boots, he felt himself become frozen, he gazed at the Winter Soldier yanked the goggles off his face with vicious movement of his hand. He caught in vantage of the intimating pale, haunted azure eyes.

The assassin glared him down with daunting gleam underneath tresses of dark hair billowing in the wind. Feeling his Adam's Apple bob up and down his throat, the agent, eased himself down, carefully. "Whoa, soldier. There is no need for you to get hostile. I'm just following my orders." He dropped his handgun, and kept his eyes leveled with the ghostly chasms. He curved his numbing lips into a false smirk. "Like I said before. I'm not going to hurt your little friend."

The Winter Soldier acutely listened to his fallacious words growing in contempt.

Being held under the gun and treated as nothing but a mere attack canine always diminished the pieces of his soul that were left untouched by HYDRA's corruption.

He was used to the abuse, but the way the agent had his weapon aimed heedlessly on the injured girl pushed all the right buttons that awakened uncontrolled fire in his body.

He clenched his metal tightening fist, his severe blue eyes darkened with the folds of shadow just enough for his rash opponent to see white orbs in his pupils.

"Get away from her," he snarled with a fierce tone of Russian, gnashing his teeth. It sent a chilling shiver down the agents spine. Ruthless and inhumane.

He flipped his body off the ground, using his strong thigh muscles, and rammed his fist into the pile of snow; and then he quickly and gracefully positioned his body into crouching stance; daring his opponent to engage the attack, with a dark twist of a rueful smirk playing over his full lips.

Stretching out his bionic arm, he shielded it over the girl while latching his deaden, feral eyes on the American agent.

"She is not to be harmed." he intoned with a cold, but firm English voice that had broken hints of a Brooklyn accent in the mix. His sinister face carried no expression, just sheer emptiness, almost like it was carved out of ice."If you fire your gun at her, I will kill you." he threatened with an acidic rasp. "I will kill you."

"Okay, that's fine by me, soldier." The agent spoke with falsely timid words.

The screeching of tires cut through the dead silence, the Winter Soldier directed his eyes to the flashes of headlights reflecting over the shields of the frozen, barren landscape, and he growled at the sight of a black van speeding closer to his position.

Within a few moments, three HYDRA agents clothed in black stealth bulletproof gear circled out the premier of the area, with their scoped weapons trained on the asset and ready to engage fire if he tried to attack.

"She is mine." The assassin thundered out a command. He looped his metal arm underneath her small form, she was weightless, he could hardly feel her brushed against his torso.

He lifted her carefully up, cradling her into the nest of his arms, and caressed his flesh fingers over her pale skin.

The haunting wraith of winter's darkness took a long moment and looked at her, really looked at the delicate ivory and lightly freckled features, the rose petal shaped lips. He had never seen such beauty. He was never given the chance to stare at a child, but he held her close to his chest, his right hand supported her back.

"I've got you," he whispered with a soothing tone that washed away his vicious snarl. She opened her bleary dark caramel eyes just enough to stare up at him, to lift a shaky hand and sculpt a gentle touch over the shape of his lips.

"Snow angel," she murmured out a faint sparse of voice. He looked stunned by the new name she gave him.

He wasn't a winged protector, no, he was a butchered demon who was created behind the gates of Hell, and he served one purpose for his marker. He took lives away. He didn't protect them.

The girl buried her face into his warm, strong chest, closing her eyes as she peacefully drift into a slumber without pain.

He stroked his metal hand fondly through the ringlets of her limp brown strands, and he felt a faint smile break over his rigid lips. It felt natural to him to feel warm spread across his face as he carried her towards the running vehicle, pasting the operatives who still had their weapons marked on his body.

The Winter Soldier didn't care. He just kept on moving forward through the sheets of merciless snow and protected her from the dangers his sharp blue eyes beheld. He sighed, speaking to her nuzzling form with a sure, but honest words that pounded beyond the icy barriers of his imprisoned heart.

"Rest," he soothed, with a firm growl and threaded his metal fingers through her messy locks as if she was his treasure."You're safe with me," he promised her.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

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><p>"Where is she?" The Winter Soldier gnashed his teeth, streaks of dark maroon stained over the ivory white. He shot at dangerous glower at the pale faced, timid scientist in front of him, holding a syringe filled with a yellowish tinged, and experimental substance.<p>

He tried to shift against the cold metal penetrating into his throbbing bones; his bare, chiseled torso was slacked with feverish sweat and his steely blues grew into darkened color of gun metal gray as he focused his intent stare at the two American operatives regally guarding the metal doors, with automatic rifles clutched in their half-gloved hands.

He wanted to escape, to break off of the leather straps pinned over his blemished skin and find the little girl; his heated blood pumping faster in his veins with a destructive flood of adrenaline that made his flesh and blood fingers curl into a constricting fist.

He emitted a low, abrasive growl up his throat and shot a murderous glower with an unsavory grimace at one of the operatives' way.

"The girl is safe," the scientist answered with uneven pitch of breath and he stifled a sharp gasp at the severe intensity burning into the assassin's blue eyes. He gulped down a knot of fear sticking the walls of his throat, and averted his brown eyes away from the unblinking stare of HYDRA's efficient and obedient asset.

"She hasn't woke up, but one of my colleagues as able to stitch up her wounds and inject antibiotics into her in case her blood developed an infection." He added with his mouth agape and chanced himself to look at the dark skinned operative nodding at him with a silence gesture of his hand pointing at the tranquilizer gun resting on the medical cart.

The assassin flexed his powerful jaw, and parted his lips just enough to show his jagged canines. He slowly narrowed his vibrant blue eyes to the floor.

"I want to see her." he whispered in a broken voice, wincing slightly at the metallic tang of blood dripping from the bruised corner of his full lips.

He swallowed thickly, keeping himself submissive to his handlers; and then he lifted his steady gaze on the scientist.

The depth of his pain filled in his eyes as he remained in a stoic state of mind while his thoughts addled, staring utterly blank at the syringe and he spoke once more in strained pitch of a broken voice, "She needs me with her. She is my mission." he drifted, feeling tears wax over his peripherals. "My mission..."

"The little brat, your friend, oh, she belongs to HYDRA now you ineffective attack mutt," the operative standing to his right snorted out with a tart voice of debased apathy, and curled his lips into a snug and wolfish smirk as his finger taunted lightly over the trigger of his armed weapon.

The Winter Soldier gaped at him with enraged eyes, on the monitor's screens it displayed a relative increase of his pulse rate. He fumed out his nostrils, and gritted his back teeth, while the other man stood in front of him with an ignorant grin stretched cross his smooth features.

"The high director will do as he pleases with her, and you will stay in your place. Maybe he will keep as his little pet." he jeered back, no emotion in his voice.

The restrained soldier listened to the vile words while growling in contempt. Rage nudged against his bones, and the metal alloy plates in his bionic arm writhed as the screeching and hissing noises of cybernetic mastery threatened to lunged at the operative. Before he could unleash his anger, and paint the walls red with the blood of his aggressors, the steel doors flung open and an aging man with copper-reddish hair strode inside the room, with haughty steps as he gave a nod for his clearance.

"Rumlow," he spoke to the operative in firm and direct voice. "Step away from him."

Hearing his order, the American agent nodded at his commander's orders, and did a sidestep back to his previous post. The man dressed in a pristine business suit moved closer to the electronic chair, and wheeled over a cushioned stool as he sat down and faced the Winter Soldier. "I understand that you encountered a small child on your last mission."

He pursed his withered lips tight giving the silent asset a few displeasing looks of scrutiny before he continued, "You killed three of my best men to escape with this child, but we know that you are starting to have your returned and this girl is responsible for your disobedience."

He shook his head, and reached out a hand, and tugged violently on the disheveled strands of the young man's hair. He scowled an ugly scowl, and narrowed his dark blue eyes at the soldier."You know the cost if you disobey your orders. I don't want you to receive pain, but if it's the only alternative to keep you in line."

The soldier swallowed hard as he thought, he unfastened his lips, "What's going to happen to her?" he asked in a weakened tone, ignoring the invasive voice of his superior. "Tell me that you will allow her to live?'

"The girl will live and be trained under my guidance. Her bloodline will help reshape this diseased world." he smirked, clasping his hand around the soldier's neck, squeezing hard against the pulse point. "She will become one of HYDRA's daughters who will obey every command programmed into her. It's better to corrupt a mind at a young age, and her mind is full of torment because of the trauma of her families death, but it's nothing that can't be erased and reinvented with a push of a switch." He roved his eyes over to the agents, who smirked cheekily at his cruel words. "Don't worry, I make sure it's quick and painless for her."

As he listened to the merciless ting in the director's voice, the soldier felt his breath hitch against his chest and painful splitting throb was now hammering into his skull. The force of his aggression pushing the metal shackles bolted down against his wrists slightly up.

His eyes grew livid, and teeth clenched as he teethed out pants of anger, and managed to break out of a shackle. He shot his captor a hard glare, before pushing the older man off the stool with a violent thrash of his metal arm.

"NO!" he screamed with an ear-shattering pitch, and felt tears burn in his eyes. "You will never touch her." he issued out a gravelly warning, and ripped the other restraint clean off the chair, throwing it to the operative's, and made them duck as the metal piece missed Rumlow's head by an inch.

In a hostile twist of his metal arm, he flipped himself out of the chair, smacking his combat boots on a table, and glared dangerously at the director rubbing his right arm. He pounced on his target, yanking him up with the collar, and holding a few inches off the floor with his stiffened metallic arm.

"Order your men to lower their guns, or I will break your neck." His metal fingers dug into reddish, sweaty skin. "They make move. They die." he snarled with disgust and cold fury burning in his molten blue eyes.

He moved the bones underneath flesh with his tightening knuckles. Humanity was beginning its reemergence in his body. He felt everything as tears rolled down his temples, and over the edges of his scowling lips.

The director was calm and managed to give him a short nod, signaling Agent Brock Rumlow and his bulky sized partner Jack Rollins who had his gun readied at the raised of his hand.

"If you want to see her, soldier. You have my clearance. Don't make a mistake that you will regret...Prove to me that you're a man and not a calibrated weapon with wires for a brain." He winced, struggling against the Winter Soldier's death grip. "Prove to her that you've had your emotions compromised. Release me, soldier. That's an order."

Hearing the command, he lowered his arm by instinct and loyalty, and he settled the director gently down to the floor. He withdrew a step back, and lowered his head before he sent a glare to Rumlow.

"Bring me to her," he growled, pointing a metal finger at the door.

"Relax, soldier." the director spoke with stern tone, rubbing his neck. He stiffened to his regal posture, watching the asset heaving out feverish breaths. "You will see your friend, I assure you, but you must now that she has been severely wounded and she is fighting a high fever. If she doesn't receive the proper antibiotics she will not survive within the twenty-hour period of infusion."

The Winter Soldier turned his head, strands of his brown hair fell into his eyes as he shot the scientist with glaring blue daggers. "You lied to me." he stormed out a vicious growl, clenching his metal hand. Rumlow tried to set a stun gun onto him, but he was fast and lunged at his target, pulling him closer to his sweaty chest before slamming him into the wall with bone shattering force.

"YOU LIED TO ME!" he screamed out, making the man trembling at his thunderous voice. He threatened to crush the man's sagging windpipe. "You told me that she was safe. I will kill you." He glowered darkly, rising the scientist and ramming his back into a glass observation window. "I want her safe."

"Release your hold on him, soldier." Rumlow chimed out with a cocky smirk twisting over his lips, marking the light of his teaser weapon point red on the assassin's back. He stepped closer, not taking his brown eyes off the other man. "There's been a misunderstanding. You want to see the little brat, then let him go."

Growling against his clamped teeth, the Winter Soldier quickly dropped his grip on the shivering man, ignoring his authoritative handlers, as he bolted to the doors. He tried to reach for the metal handle, until a high voltage shock zapped through his body causing his muscles to jerk in pain as he lost his footing and collided with the cement floor.

The director lifted his thumb off a small USB sized device clutched his hand, and shook his head in disappointing manner as he issued out a clear order,"Bring him to the girl. It's better to give our asset an ounce of humility before we take everything away from him once again."

He looked at his agents with coldness etched over his sadistic, wrinkled features. "After all, gentlemen, he will be sharing a cold future with her."

He turned and looked at the scientist with an unemphatic stare as he removed a sidearm revolver, and fired a round into the man's chest. Flexing his jaw, he listened to the body drop within a second before looking at his short agent. "I want this mess cleaned up before we hook the girl to the machine. No mistakes."

Rumlow returned with a short nod, and thumped his boots closer to the unconscious assassin, grabbed the laden arms with his gloved hands as Rollins lifted up legs by the ankles and hauled out him of the chamber while allowing the metal hand to scrape against the floor.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

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><p>Coldness sliced further inside her rigid bones; everything was numb-even her blood. Straining to breathe harder as she could manage, the girl traversed her blearily gaze around the room of medieval decor; the crackles of fire lulled her body to ease as wave of comfort lapped over her; saturating her churning blood with heat. The following moment that seized her, bounded her into the darkness of a looming presence, but she condemned to the twisting knots of pain erupting within her small frame strapped into a wooden chair, in front of a stone fireplace.<p>

Her wrists twisted underneath metal shackles locked over her chest, yanking and feeling her muscles protest against the chains.

There was glossy coating of tears masking over the beautiful caramel of her irises; shivering and timid she parted her lips, opening her throat up, but she was too weak to speak. All the escaped from her vocals was a muffled cry that was intermingled with weakening breath.

Flinching at a strange touch coiling over her skin, she dared her female captor a timid glance; trying to protest when long fingers caught the strands of her dark mahogany hair, threading each piece in between the wove of her fingers.

The woman was tall, invasive and almost wore the semblance of a witch over her pale sculpted face. Emerald green dyed hair was fastened into a thick braid touching her lower back, and muscular frame was clothed in a military ebony uniform with shiny golden buttons on the leather collar of her jacket.

It took only a mere second to feel the tension bubbling in her veins as she stared at a pair of steel scissors gleaming in the shafts of light...only a moment to grasp the honorific tool clutched in the woman's hand. The serrated blades were only inches from the clusters of her beautiful hair, the only remainder of her mother.

"This form of insult was collected disease and must be sliced off to make you pure." The woman spoke with a disgusted hiss ragging up her throat, degrading the child's wounded soul with vile words rolling from the tip of her tongue."You will become a new daughter of our family. Beautiful and loyal to every wish your father expects you to grant."

There was no time to scream. She was pushed back against the chair, struggling to fight, but the jerking quarrel ended when the scissors opened and snipped her hair. She watched the tresses fall to the floor.

She was being butchered.

Gloved fingers kept on collecting the strands, cutting the thickness as vacant green eyes matched the sadistic grin etched over the woman's full lips.

The girl twitched in the chair, breaking her lips apart, and releasing faint cries as piece by piece her appearance changed.

It wasn't until the older female withdrew a step back, and gazed at her work with prideful gleam sparking in her darkened eyes.

The female captor slowly raked a serpentine gaze over the child, admiring the new hair style, shoulder length hair that draped over her pale, gawky cheeks, disheveled and marred into the in the mien of a dehumanized slave for HYDRA.

She was shattered.

Crying with every tear she could muster, the child tore her head away to the side, feeling the shortened locks slash over her cheeks. The new feeling she was experiencing was so hard for her small form to retract too in a short period of time. The bond of the substance the doctors injected her with became grease sticking over the bones of her ribs and caking ooze over her pounding heart.

"Your rite of induction will commence once you are purified with humanity's cancer that infects this world."

"Where is my friend?' the girl asked admitting out a breath, her eyes closing into slits. Fragments of memory struck her mind of extremely piercing eyes, the color of a winter azure sky and a metal hand pressing against her stomach wound. A hollow sound escaped from her throat. "I want my friend." she demanded in a cracking tone.

"You only get what you receive, princess." The woman growled in her real voice of German with ting of sordid vehemence ghosting over her scowling lips.

She grabbed the girl's chin, inclining her to meet her villainous stare, and dug her polished nails into ashen skin. She stared intently, watching her captive's expression flatten into a semblance of fear.

"The Winter soldier isn't your friend. He is a soulless machine. He is not a human." She intoned scraping her index finger over the girl's curved jaw line. "You may treat him as your pet...Or a loyal dog, but he is below our ranks. He doesn't deserve a brat's compassion."

Trembling, suddenly feeling the hammering pulse against her skull, the girl clenched her eyes shut beckoning her courage. "Remember him saving me in the snow," she said in a low pitch of a rattled voice.

"HYDRA saved you from a bitterness of death instead of leaving you to freeze out in the cold. Do you understand that?"

"Yes."

The woman with green hair was making her scared, apprehensive even. She felt every fiber in her body scream in pain when the hand of her merciless tormentor pressed hard against her bandaged mid-section, applying pressure over the gunshot wound, and making her shed away more tears.

With her body wrapped in chains, her muffled and broken voice as intermix of confusion. "When can I see my friend?" she asked in mere whisper, feeling her heart reach an impasse against her bruised chest.

The woman just laughed cruel and spiteful at the little voice. "Open your eyes and I will tell you."

She opened her eyes, shuddering under the intense glower as if she was accused for a crime. "Please let me see him?"

"How many hours have you slept?"

Shifting her intent focus to the embers lighting over the charred logs in the fireplace, she was obviously avoiding the deaden stare, she narrowed her brown eyes to where her trim stomach was covered with cotton gauze, gazing at the blood stains leaking through the layers and bruise darkening over her small right hand, the marks left by tubes, a cut etched in the skin over her forearm where a needle must have punctured when a substance had saturated her blood in greasy hold of toxic poison.

A low growl emitted from the woman's throat, "You're not looking at me, princess. How many?"

"I don't know." she answered in a frantic tone, her brown eyes scanned acutely over the floor. "Where's my mommy's locket?" she asked, feeling the muscles in her chest stiffen against the drumming heart beat. Her expression morphed into a distraught and abashed look. She fought against the urge of impending vomit rising up the swollen walls of her throat. She shook her head and muddled out incoherent words that soon turned into a blood churning scream of dolor. "Please...I don't want to lose it."

"You will get it back once you are completely healed." The woman lied through a false smile, backing away from the distressed child before leveling her shadowy glare at the scraps of hair piled around the legs of the chair.

"You will return to your room and stay there until we summon for your presence...Your friend will be waiting for you."

She clicked her leather heeled boots to the wooden door, and the moment the wood dragged over the stone floor, a tall man dressed in tactical black armor advanced in silent, methodical strides.

"The asset has been placed in the brat's room as you instructed Madame HYDRA," he spoke with a cadence of malice, lowering his head as a gesture of respect.

"We disarmed him from weapons and placed restraints to hold him in place in case he disobeys and tries to disobey and take her away." He added, unlocking the chains off the child, grabbing her, squeezing pressure over her shoulder, she unreleased a scream, but he gave her a blank stare.

"Tell the director that everything has been prepared for the induction. The serum has been recreated and perfected from Zola's old records. When the injections are completed HYDRA will have a new daughter that will follow every command of her father without humanness and defiance." Madame HYDRA sneered with a dark gleam masking over her green eyes when she settled a dark, lusty stare on the girl.

"She will become magnificent." she added, looking at the operative. "Remove the restraints off of the Winter Soldier. I want our new daughter to feel safe with him as the transcendence of her new life under our shadow begins."

Lifting her up with one arm, the voiceless operative threw her shivering body over his broad shoulder like she was a sack of potatoes and walked out and down the torch lit hallway.

* * *

><p>When he awoke, the muscular planes of his back dug against the hard, cold floor. The Winter Soldier fixed his bleary and ghostly blue eyes on the shafts of moonlight streaming from the arched, barred window and slowly his vision came into focus as the searing and harrowing feeling crawled through his veins. He could smell the dense air permeating through the room, and listened to the familiar cries echo in his ears. Fragments of memory scarred over his impaired mind. He stiffened into an uprooted stance, his darkened eyes scanned over the room systematically until he locked his intense, but vacant glare on a dithering shape curled in a corner.<p>

Solace brushed over his heart, as he felt the iciness melt away as he listened to the sobbing of a familiar voice. He stalked closer in slow and cautious strides, and found her, the child the made him feel human again.

She was different, there he remembered her, long brown hair butchered into same style he wore his own chestnut strands draped over his obscured face.

Her thin features pale and flushed with heat from a violent wave of feverish symptoms..She didn't look like that small, injured angel that he carried through the squalls of the snow tempest. She was prisoner, wounded, scared and alone to fend for her survival against the rabid wolves of HYDRA. His blue eyes widened at the inflamed mark on her neck. The swollen puncture holes of various needles were red and to tender to the touch. They had lied to him-given him a false hope in a structured delirium that made him believe that she was safe from the horror.

_Who is she?_

Halting in his calculated steps, he crouched down to her level. Instinct told him to rest his hand on her trembling shoulder, the Winter Soldier realized that even now she was changing into a dehumanized weapon.

Tears for the first sign of her soul breaking apart. He knew that she wasn't going to keep her innocence, but he also that this child needed him; and he never had a friend who didn't treat him as a hollow shell. Maybe she was his freedom out of the desolation of red carnage, vivid nightmares of bloodshed and abhorrent screams and the senseless deliriums that obstructed his real memories. His real existence.

A deep sinking anguish was churning in his stomach; he reached out his metal hand, and placed it over her bruised shoulder, taking against the burning pain with the coldness of his frosty touch of alloy that seeped into her throbbing bones as the moonlight shone over them.

"It's okay, I'm not going to hurt you. I know you want to cry, but you can't...You need to show strength. Not weakness." he crooned in soft Russian a brush of soothing warmth, allowing his breath to ghost over her tarnished skin. "Pretend it's just a bad dream," he muttered, taming her despair. He looked clinically focused on the cotton sheathed around her tiny waist.

The girl lifted up her head, wetness streaked over her sallow cheeks, but she looked into the deep streaks of silver that had gripped around the soulless darkness of his pupils-razor shards of azure that melted into a light crystal blue underneath the shadow of his long strands of brown hair.

_Am I really doing this?_

She elevated her shaking hand, but she managed to crack a smile, his eyes reminded her of a December sky, clear and carried mystery of winter. Her fingers stroked over the full shape of his still lips, the calmness that shone in his sharp gaze kept her steady and unafraid.

He simply pulled her to his lap, and placed her head on the smooth planes of his fervent chest. His metal arm wrapped like a shield over her tiny form as he lowered himself down to the floor, keeping her secured against his ardent body, using every ounce of heat to keep her warm.

She nuzzled snug against him, and drifted into a slumber while he conserved his lethal stare on the room's door, ready to attack if danger threatened to claim her.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

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><p>She woke out of the vivid nightmares, tears streaked over her ashen cheeks and dissolved against the soothing warmth emitting from his bare chest. She was entering a void filled with warp fragments of damaged memories. Images of her mother fading into dingy blackness. Everything was becoming a distant memory, it almost like poison had dripped into her veins, clotting her blood with coldness and numbness.<p>

"Mommy!"

The pain stuck into the hollow bones of her rib cage, coating her heart with burning ooze that slowly ate away into soul. She wanted to scream out her mother's name, but for some reason, she could only conceive faces in her mind, no names or numbers.

Blank pictures, colorless and turning into shades of grey. Each image of her parents and baby sister were disjointed with static, some were spindling into a web, twirling like prey trying to escape from the shackles of the weavers, red spiders with many heads, slowly crawling a taunting, until it struck at the heart and devoured the innocence of that dream.

Crying silently, the girl violently gripped the frayed blanket cloaking over her distressed form, holding out to something that kept her from drifting further into chasm.

She listened to the drumming sound of his resilient heart beating against her ear brought a knell of comfort to her aching body, she nuzzled her face into the graven creases of his pectorals, her tiny fingers traced over the silver crescent scars etched in layers of firm muscle. They were small to the naked eye, barely visible in the shafts of sunlight caressing over his body.

For a vague moment, she became a captive, falling into a trance of a dark past written on the planes of his chest.

She wanted to pound her small fists into the stone floor, unleash all the anguish knotting in her body. She wanted her captors to hear her torture, but her voice was locked away by exhaustion.

At that moment when she sniffled and buried her face fully into his chest, her nose crunching his metal hand stroked over her back in circular movement, easing away the tension.

The feeling of his touch came to her heart. She shot her head up and blinked momentarily, tying to focus against the tears blurring her vision. It took a few more blinks, until she gained enough clarity from the mushy darkness to stare into his intense blue eyes that pulled her into a winter storm.

Feeling the infliction and confusion hasten in her, the girl lifted her shaking hand and cautiously rubbed her fingers over the dimple engraved in his strong chin. Her brown eyes steadied and lifted as she took in his appearance, each time she looked at him, he seemed less intimating, there was squares of light around his pupils, tenderness that was veiled by fierce semblance, but she knew that he would never harm her. She trusted him with her life, giving him a chance to become human and fight against the morbid programming of dehumanization wired in his brain.

There was a etching of fear written on his face, timidness of mere child trapped inside him, as his unnerving stare never broke his eye contact from her curious gaze.

With a faint smile, the girl straightened against his lap, crossing her little, thinned legs over his black combat pants.

"What do they call you?" she asked in a soft voice.

The Winter Soldier blinked, but he kept his lips fastened into a taunt line. He didn't know what to say to her, he had never expected this to be happening to him.

Staring in her large brown eyes, made his stern expression flattened out into hint of confusion.

"I don't remember." he spoke in a distant voice, allowing his gravely whisper to carry through the air.

His eyebrows creased, and he tried to collect olden memories, but everything was scramble into a crimson haze or horror.

He wrenched his eyes away from her, and added after swallowing a large gulp of air, more words poured out of him, "I don't think I have a name."

"I have a name, but I can't remember it." she replied, biting on her lower lip. Her scattered thoughts were collapsing. "But I know I do have a name."

He lowered his head, lips pulled into a frown. "You will remember," he spoke in a ghostly whisper, his eyes locked on his metal knuckles rolling as he flexed his hand.

"Did the same thing happen to you?" He shot her with a vacant, obscured glare. She didn't flinch. "Did you lose your family and get hurt?"

A heaving sigh erupted from his chest. His Adam's apple was bobbing along the wall of his throat, and he stared at her, struggling to force out a breath. "I don't know." he answered with incoherent words. His metal hand unclenched and raked through his dangling and long tresses of hair, digging into his soft, oily surface of his skull, gripping a fistful and screwing his eyes shut. He looked disillusioned and lost in his own mind. His trembling lips moved, but she couldn't hear what he was saying in harsh Russian.

The Winter Soldier looked down at his shimmering alloy, as umbrage of a wraith was overtaking him.

Most of his matted hair concealed his face. Dots of sweat trickled over his brow and a sharp clenched of his jaw revealed inward torment.

He stiffened against the wall, feeling the bare muscular planes of his back settle into the spaces of the stone.

For a long moment, silence hung between them. He looked at her. "I remember feeling pain and snow...Everything else," he paused, his throat creating a clicking noise as he searched for memory. "I keep on seeing a face...A man on a bridge calling out someone's name and his eyes filled with tears. Maybe I knew him, but I..."

His upper row of teeth dragged over his bottom lip. "I don't remember his name." he scalded at those images twining in his brain and then his ardent blue eyes fixed on the dimness still linger around the vast room.

With a sweep of his lashes against skin, he had crushed the tears building watery film in his eyes. Just one had manged to escape. It slid down the chiseled plane of his tensed cheek and fell to her hand with a gentle splat. "I'm not supposed to feel," he half-growled, fasten his lips into a condensed sulk. "They told me I couldn't cry...that I hollow and cold as metal."

He settled his intent gaze on to the girl, his blue irises lightened, and mouth opened, "It's you," he rasped, blinking and looked harder into her small face. "You're not afraid of me. Not like the others around here. I don't understand why you stay close to me, I'm dangerous...I don't mean to be, but I am."

He respected her bravery, and felt a burst of warmth reemerged in his body when he stared into the caramel swirls of her innocent eyes with his own glassy crystal azure chasms. "Why do you allow me to stay with you?" he asked in a voice of desperation.

The lavish shapes of his mouth folded into a pained grimace. "You do know that might hurt you?"

"The woman with the green hair said that I will be someone's...someone's daughter," she spluttered out words and narrowed her head, clasping her tiny hand over her wrist; her voice was threatening to crack. "I do not want a new mommy or daddy. No one can replace them. No matter what the monsters take away from me."

She turned her head away suddenly, keeping her wary focus on the window panes, and stared at the rays of sunlight breaking through ashen clouds. Her eyes watered with stinging tears. "I want to go back home."

The girl crossed her thin arms over her chest, squeezing against her throbbing ribs. "I don't like this place." She combed her finger through butchered strands of her brown hair; some of the locks were uneven in length. She was showing the stoic assassin her distress through forceful yanks that jerked her head. "They do bad things to people. Make them ugly."

Flexing his half- gloved hand on the girl's shoulder, the Winter Soldier applied toasty warm to resonate the echoes of pain moiling in her body. "Hey," he bellowed in loud and unsteady voice that made her quake under his stare and conveyed his order, with a slight inkling of displeasure, "Stop crying."

She blanched at the tone of his voice, and halted her tears, sniffling. Her little heart felt bruised by all the traumatic imagery cultivating in her mind. "I'm scared."

"You're not dead. You should keep that in mind," he discharged out a growl. He didn't know how to converse with a child who appeared to be the around of seven. This was strange and disheartening for him.

Listening to the chorus of sobs, he regarded her with a passive gaze, trying to understand her emotions, and watching the wetness streak down her pale cheeks. The remnants of his heart burned against his chest, he ignored the tug on the threads of his soul and searched beyond her glossy stare, blowing out a frustrated breath, a few stands flipped over his blue eyes when she wailed out crackles of grief and shook against him.

"I need you to stop crying, he spoke with a hint of lightness in timbre. His eyes shifted and lips went still. "You can't show that you feel. They will not allow it because it's a weakness for them." He leveled her with tenderness gleaming through the shadows casting over his menacing face. "Do you understand that?"

"Yes," she baited out a heavy breath, and leaned her head into his chest, allowing him to feel the warm tears veneering over his skin. "I understand." Before he could say a few more words, the girl inclined her head, looking up at him with pleading brown eyes. "Will you please stay here with me?"

The Winter Soldier was calculating her heartbreak in silence, and it made him feel like a knife wielded in his heart when her little voice beckoned for his security.

She was so small, fragile and alone. He refused with every ounce of his scarred humanity to allow himself not to abandon his mission. He made a promise once to a young boy with corn silk hair and gentle blue eyes, maybe a little brother that he would never leave his side. Now, those memories felt like a wasted dream, but yet the vow seemed to become reborn back into his defective and corroded soul.

"Do you need me?" he asked with a rive of modulation, gazing at her with his unyielding eyes. She nodded for a second. "I will stay with you."

She smiled, and settled her face back onto his chest. She closed her eyes and listened to thumping of his heartbeat. "I like you. I don't care what that witch says about you...You're a good man."

His blue eyes enlarged and breath grew into heavy coattails, "I'm not a good man..." He echoed back, tearing from his clasped lips. He turned his head away, restraining from the emotions seeping out of his tensed bones. "The world calls me death-I am the Winter Soldier. That is my existence." He clenched his jaw tight. "I am a ghost that haunts good man in their nightmares. The perfect soldier and killer. I am not a good man-I'm a weapon." He narrowed his deaden blue eyes back to her, watching her drift into a peaceful slumber. He lowered his head down and pressed a warm kiss over her shortened locks. He held it there and whispered, "You are pure as light...Freedom."


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

* * *

><p>Staleness of winter permeated through the air, flickers of amber light reflected off the stone walls. She at the long wooden, mahogany varnished table, long polished lime green fingernails tapped absently over the stem of the wine glass.<p>

The nefarious and lethal Madame HYDRA, sat rigid in the high back chair, her translucent eyes darkened with malice, and shifted to the piles of folders marked with black imprint of HYDRA. The room was deathly still, and the ambiance of fear hung over the entire room like a thick cloak. She flexed her jaw, and stared eye leveled at the man fashioned in a choral gray business suit, with glasses resting on the bridge of his nose.

She settled her changeless emerald colored eyes on him, observing his stern expression before she finally decided to cut the silence,

"The child shows potential, but carries much complacence that can't be easy broken with our methods," she affirmed, glancing at the folders in front of her with a twist of an obscured smirk holding over the corners of her dark shaded lips. "I know she has a weakness that we can penetrate. The assent is her comfort and someone that she feels safe with, I suggest if we can make the Soldier deceive her then, the bond will commence and HYDRA will have a new daughter. A new bloodline for our reformation."

The director gave her a curt of a regal nod, "Her mind is damaged already from the loss of her parents. She will become easy to control once we take away her innocence."

Madame HYDRA stared at him for a long moment and locked a firm gaze his way, the taste of power seeped over her soft lips and trickled down the raw walls of her throat. She remained unspoken, conceiving her thoughts and discarded her concern for the latest victim. Her eyes glinted against the shadows veiling over her pale skin, and she licked the sweetness of the wine off the curved edges of her lips before giving her piece of observation, a spiteful husk carried out the words cultivating in her cunning, debased mind, "The girl will learn every aspect of fear, her mind and body will become immune to submission for her handlers. She is a young omega, weak and useful to break under our commands."

Narrowed dark blue eyes looked over the documents clutched in his wrinkled hands, "Is she strong enough to sustain function after the injections?"

She sneered instantly at his gruff words and gave him an inhumane glower. "She has survived this long." she admitted, before adding to her statement with mildly growl, "She doesn't know how to react to pain. Each injection feels like a wasp sting to her pathetic body. Soon her arms will become numb and she will feel nothing...Dehumanized into perfection molded by our hands."

"The asset will stay with her until she no longer feels attachment to humanity."

With a short nod and a licentious smirk, she replied, "What if he gains his existence back?"

The director shook his head. He pursed his lips and dropped the folder on the table, "I don't need him out in the field with the others. He has completed his missions, but he will be needed once things have started in motion back in America ... We have limited access to the tools we need to rebuild this empire. The parasites have already been planned, it's just a matter of time and patience until everything is devoured and old enemies are compromised."

Rubbing her lips, and smacking them once, Madame HYDRA, reached for a folder, pulling it closer, and stared with intent green eyes at the printed names and photos of the targets. "Just tell me when, how we are going to bring them to ruin and leave only ashes?" she questioned, scraping her index finger nail over the photo of a red and white shield with a star in the middle of blue paint in the center.

* * *

><p><em>Human.<em>

He thought against the weaving folds of silence hanging over his stoic frame, his muscled legs tucked against his pectorals, chin resting on his right knee, and the arch of his plump lips rubbed over the leather material of his pants. His ghostly eyes hardly stared at the doorway; faint squares of light became trapped in the chasm of piercing azure as he passively roved his unnerving stare, intently glancing at the girl huddled underneath blankets. She was beautiful in the shafts of morning light, pure, frail and innocent. The marks of abuse were etched in the skin of her small limbs, dark mahogany strands had fallen limply over her still face as he acutely listened to the soft whimpers of distress. He rued silently that the child probably needed food, and refused to allow weakening form to starve.

"I know that you're not sleeping..." He said in a roughened and raspy voice, his changeless gaze looked directly at her, watching her delicate pale lips curve into a playful smirk. She pulled the blankets over her face, and wept with shattering breaths as tears drenched the cotton of the sheets. He straightened to his full height, and advanced closer to the bed in slow and hushed footing, the echoes of his heart prompted him to engage over the obstruction of shadows.

He unclenched his teeth, and paused on the bed side, lowering his metal hand, trying to control the contortion of the metal plates as he gently tugged on the blanket. "I gave you the order not to cry. You've been disobeying the commands I have given to you." he affirmed in a direct undertone. The covers peeled off, as he narrowed his feverish blue eyes down at her, fixing his intense glower on the tears streaking over her ashen cheeks.

Unsettled, he mashed his teeth, into his bottom lip, waves uncertainly jostled over him, rattling his bones as he reached an impasse between emotion and order. He blinked the red haze, the crimson hue that always veiled over his vision ever since he felt the drills circulate through the ivory of his bones when he was butchered into pieces and reconstructed into a devoid of a desensitized weapon. Something flickered in his soul, the moment locked his protracted gaze on her face, and he instinctively settled his real hand over the side of her face, sliding his thumb gently underneath her bleary eye, and swiped away the wetness. "You need to stop crying. They will hurt you." he aforementioned, trying to ease her pain with a warm brush over his fingers against her blemished skin, and he sighed, deeply and broken. "I know you're scared and that you can feel pain ... You need to show no more emotion around them."

She grasped his arm with a thrust of her hand, holding on to him as if he had become her life line. "The woman with green hair has my locket..." she panted out frantically, ignoring the growls of hunger erupting from her bony, thinned stomach. «It belongs to me." she dragged out with a weak breath, tension creeping fast in her throat. She needed the locket, needed to stare at the photo of her parents. The only treasured memory that she could keep, and help the damaged part of her mind to remember their faces and names. "It was a gift from my mother. I need it back."

He felt her little body cling onto him, her face buried into his shirt of frayed black as his hand lowered on her shoulder, "I do not know if I can get it for you." he whispered, stiffening his lips into a tight grimace, his eyes systematically moved to the door, he twisted his torso, dark strands whipped against his face as set his glaring blue daggers dangerously at armed operative mounted in the division of light and shadow, with a metal tray of food gripping in his gloved hands. The Winter Soldier dropped his gaze on a green apple, and instantly strode to the door. "The apple," he demanded, holding out his metal hand, and clenching his chiseled jaw. "NOW!"

The operative nimbly gave him a quick nod, and threw the apple into the air, the assassin caught it with a quick reflex of his arm, and scalded at the young dark haired Russian, turning on his boots and moved back to the girl.

"Leave us," he growled lowly; effortlessly scooping her trembling frame in his arms, hoisting her off the bed and settled his body on the floor; pressing the muscular planes of his rigid back against the mattress. Placing his hands against her sides, he held her securely, bringing his knees apart and giving her more room, and then he pulled out his knife, twiddling in between his fingers, with efficient movements of his knuckles and sliced the blade through the white, juicy flesh of the fruit, cutting the apple into small rectangular pieces and handed them to her. "Here, eat this."

She shook her head, stubbornly, "I'm not hungry." she cried softly, her arm clutching around her waist, disregarding the apple slices. Her body trembled with trepidation. He stroked his metal fingers with her shorted locks, calming her down with a tender gleam in his focused and haunting blue eyes, he was aware of her sickness, high fever and churning stomach. The lingering stench of torture reeked over her skin, wavering in the air between them. She was fading, and becoming weaker each time they removed her from the room. He had to save her.

"You are starving yourself." he intoned with a concerned husk in his voice, and he contemplated on forcing her to eat or giving her a choice. He pursed his lips, fighting against the vicious and toxic programming the emerged from the dark recesses of his marred mind, glitches of compassion barely stayed, but he managed to withstand the violent urges, and cautiously lift his hand up to her face, dabbing the slice of the apple against her chapped lips, allowing her to feel the cool juice. "I want you to open your mouth," he said in a tentative pitch, looking directly into her uneasy brown irises. "This will help you feel better."

No response. With ire shadowing his face, the Winter Soldier then grabbed her jaw, pressing over the bones, and forced her mouth to unlock. She squirmed, but he managed to slip the piece over her tongue. "Chew it," he ordered in a firm voice. She stared blankly at him, trying to spit it out, he wouldn't let her. Finally, she moved her teeth over the diced apple, and swallowed. He gave her a hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his full lips, "Good girl."

She leaned in forward and nuzzled her head against his sculpted chest, shivering against the feverish chills encasing over her bones. His flesh hand cautiously rubbed over her back, applying heat as he held her close to him, narrowing his piercing azure eyes down, feeling the vulnerability and humanity cloak over him. It made his heart swell.

Listening to her moans of discomfort, the threads of his soul warred, he felt the instinct, broke through his programming, watching the tears slope over the alloy plates of his arm, feeling her jerk against the distress and pain. He slid his hand over her dangling locks, finding her forehead and then tilted his head down and pressed cold relief over the hot skin of her brow, his lips held there for a long moment and he closed his eyes and whispered as he listened to her wheeze out a straining cough, "Stay with me, little angel..."

* * *

><p>Agent Brock Rumlow trotted his haughty strides down the vacant hallway; a sadistic hunger masked over his dark chocolate eyes as he ceased in his footing in front of an arched barred window. He stood pliant, hiding the impatience clotting in his veins, dim light reflected over his tactical gear, black Kevlar vest, resistant to straight-shots and knives from assaults he endured during his covert missions with his team. His moderate tan skin darkened as his gloved fingers rub over the handle of his combat knife attached to his belt. When he listened to the door creak open, he involuntarily positioned his slender frame into a regal stance and stared at the director with his unyielding eyes set into a harden expression as he kept his lips into a neutral line and listened in mute silence to his direct orders of his superior.<p>

"Did your team receive the orders to remove the bodies from the site?" The director asked, looking over his glasses and pursed his lips into a firm grimace. "I want no loose ends. The evidence of the attack must become ash; our newest asset is warring against emotions and memories of her parents. We need to rake off everything and leave her in the dark about the truth. Her bloodline is our future."

Rumlow drew out a deep, abysmal breath, his dark eyes gleamed with ire, "What about our loyal dog? He has shown emotion towards the brat...Weakness and allowed her to compromise his programming. Should he be punishment or mind swiped to restore him back into a weapon?" he questioned, leveling and unnerved glower at his superior, feeling something unsettling fall deep into his gut, he knew the child lacked discipline and carried defiance within her tiny body. He needed to tear her into shreds, making her feel pain and force her to enter the void of her deepest and darkest fears until she will become a vacant soldier to his commands.

He was meticulous with performing levels of brutal torture to corrupt the human mind. He was a dog of carnage, a beast that craved to taste innocent blood and watch his victims scream under his shadow. "The asset is acting like the runt's protector-I have been observing them, and I sense they share a connection almost like a brother and sister. He is becoming defective."

"Rumlow, you know what happens when complacence takes hold of the mind?" the older man executed with a firm pitch in his voice. "We extract it by taking a little piece at a time."

"Yes, sir." Rumlow answered with a calm hint of cadence in his gruff voice. His scruffy jaw flexed as he narrowed his nefarious stare at his knuckles. "It will necessary to remove her past. I will give the orders to Rollins to firebomb the area of the girl's estate. The bodies have already been removed to different location and cremated as I was instructed by Madame HYDRA. There will be nothing for her to attach too, she is at HYDRA's mercy now."

The director nodded, his commanding grayish navy colored eyes settled on the operative, "Once the girl regains her strength, break her will," he said, with an emotionless tone ragging from his throat, "Use the asset. Make him bleed until that little girl finally gives in to our corruption and allows the serum to emerge into her body."

Dismissively, Rumlow gave him a curt of nod, the bones of his neck cracked, "Understood, sir."


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

* * *

><p>Looking into the swirls of caramel, he hated the feeling of being distant and stoic, it made his stomach churn and bones feel petrified. It made him want to become human again.<p>

It made him want to shield his warmth over her shivering body as she curled against his side, her laden arms wrapped over his stomach; he felt the tremors subside as he fondly stroked his metal hand through her shorten locks of hair, he wanted to see more humanity, at least understand emotions that many HYDRA agents that he had observed in the past never held on their harden faces.

_You can't feel. You're a weapon. Hollow and cold._

His metal fingers slowly made their trek down her back, carefully avoiding the bandages that covered her wounds, she was still shrunken down, timid, afraid and drenching his black shirt with salty tears.

He took a deep breath to steady himself and glanced at the doorway, before his intense blue eyes snapped down to her paled face.

"Why can't I go outside?" The little girl asked, grabbing the martial of his shirt into small fists with a tight squeeze as she sniffled into his tensed muscles.

"Uh...» He cleared his throat and coughed roughly. "I don't know why you can't leave your room..." His voice drifted as he turned his gaze back to the door, just to double check. "I think I have an idea, you have to stay right here and don't move..." He mumbled, barely sounding firm, he gently settled her arms down, and eased himself off the floor, still looking at the door, with his intense blue eyes. He could sense danger, impending threats in the shadows, and even though his was a lethal killer, he knew harm would come to her, if he blinked.

"Where are you going?" she asked in a weakening voice, and tried to lift herself off the floor, but her balance was unsteady, and legs wobbled as she stood up against the wall.

His jaw clenched as he tried to retain his tetchy anger that was growing in his veins as he glanced over his shoulder, eyeing her with a villainous look. There was a part of him that wanted to show affection to her, but his programmed mind kept that part locked up inside and he took a deep breath and blew it steadily, his exhalation was shaky with bitter rage, "I'm not going anywhere...I can't." He lowered his head at the floor, and twisted his torso around, moving in haste to the balcony, snapped off the lock, and took a step outside, grabbing a pile of snow with his metal hand, and forming it into a snow ball.

"What is that?" She asked and staggered closer to him, looking up at the snowball in his hand.

He stiffened his lips into a scowl, "I told you not to move," he hissed ruefully, not wanting to listen to her little voice, but she was relentless, and shifted her tiny form in front of him, looking up at his face with her needy brown eyes. Growling under his breath, and averted her stare.

"Stop looking at me like that," He mumbled sharply, his voice deep and gravelly, he was trying to hide the lightness shining in his blue eyes as her frail hand touched his metal plated wrist. Blowing up a frustrated breath, a few pieces of his dark hair flipped out of his eyes, and crouched down slowly to her, holding out his bionic hand, and whispered in a gruff tone, "Take it."

She gave him a bright smile, and took the snowball out of his hand, her fingers curled over the cold layers of ice, and her body shook against the wispy flakes that fell into her hair. «Why did you make this for me?"

The Winter Soldier sucked his lips into a grimace, "I don't know, I thought it was the right thing to do and...» He trailed off, shifting his eyes back to the bedroom's door. "I think we need to go back inside."

"Thank you," she entrapped his waist inside the lock of a grateful hug, he was startled by her emotions that had entered inside of his heart.

"You're welcome," he returned, holding her against him and ignoring the commanding voice of Brock Rumlow in the doorway that shot out the orders to move into the hall. He didn't want to depart from her, not when she needed him to protect her, but he had to obey for her survival. Pulling away, he guided her back into the room, lifted her on the edge of the bed and told her, "Stay here for me," he placed his hand on her frozen cheek, «I won't be gone long."

Staring at the tears roll down her face, he stepped away from the bedside, feeling another piece of his soul rip and moved in hastily strides to the door.

"You're need outside, asset." Rumlow spoke in a emotionless voice, keeping his dark brown eyes latched on the child, and he waited for the assassin to disappear into the shadows, and then he moved into the bedroom. He thumped his boots and placed his gloved hand on her shoulder, "Is it getting colder outside, sweetheart? I know that you want to go and play, your friend will be out there playing a few games with some of my pals, why don't we and play our own little game?"

She glared up at him, "I'm not supposed to talk to strangers...Even the ugly ones," she smirked, holding her defiance, and he hand squeezed harder on her shoulder.

"I'm not stranger, I'm an old friend of Winter," he grinned darkly, yanking her arm, and pulling her off the bed, blocking out her screaming protests. "Now, lets go outside and play..."

* * *

><p>In the devoid of the snow, the Winter Soldier stood on motionless on the frozen ground, breathing the cold air as it scraped against his lungs. The slashes of the wind bit against his tensed jaw, he never flinched. He remained uprooted on the mounds of snow, his leather combat boots pressed with traction as his tresses of dark hair dangled over his pale haunted azure eyes.<p>

He was immune to the coldness encasing over his marred bones, the alloy plates of his metal arm never grew stiff as the temperature dropped a few degrees.

Restless, he felt the churning of his disheveled soul rip into shreds as his intent, murderous glower leveled with the faints flakes of snow falling from the ashen clouds above his frozen body. He wanted existence to flow back into his veins, to the warmth of his own blood pulsing with the single pound of his heart.

The Winter Soldier did not have a name; he did not have a birthday, a reason to step forward without the directive of voices commanding him to move; no emotions gathered over his chiseled face. Everything had been raked away when he was strapped into the unbreakable restraints, injected with lucid substance that made his veins burn with liquid fire. He was a hollow weapon, molded in the image of HYDRA; his hands were laden and glued to the cold metal of sniper rifles, pistols and knives.

_Car explosion. Two charred bodies..Americans...Husband and wife._

There was no escape for him, no freedom to run without being followed by his handlers. Extraction of his humanity always happened, if he remembered a single name, a lyric of olden song that replayed in the recess of his impaired mind. Lately, after rescuing the child, he had been haunted by distant past. Images configured and flashed when he dared himself to close his eyes, and fall back into the darkness.

"Tell me what you see, Soldier?"

"There is a boy," he felt his own breath ghost over his chilled lips, feeling the warm of the memories reemerge back into his fractured heart. He blinked a few times, batting his lashes against his frozen cheeks, melting the particles of snow, as he released a deep, abysmal sigh of confusion. He was incoherent with words, mumbling in harsh Russian, and squeezing his eyes shut, relenting against the thralls of pain crashing over his body.

He entered the throes of delirium, forcing images from the rifts of his barred subconscious. He always expected his fate, the coldness and the bite of death penetrating farther into the marrow of his solid bones. It was his punishment. "I remember a boy...He had golden hair and bright blue eyes. And he looks sick...dying in a small room...The boy needs..."

"Kneel down, Soldier," a virulent baritone of German commanded in the dimness of gray light. "That's an order..."

Feeling his legs strained, he crashed to his knees. He wrapped his arms over his Kevlar vest, rocking his body frantically, entering another relapse, feeling the weights of his sins crush his bones into paste. He blocked out the barren landscape, reentered the myriad cimmerian pools of chaotic thoughts, swirling into ripples of dark maroon and sooty black until everything was swallowed into a chasm.

_Screaming._

_It was a sound that had been emblazon in his blood clogged ears, his head was filled with flame. He felt the cracks of his soul open as the tantalizing voltage from the machines surged through his battered form._

_ He was a prisoner under the shadow of their merciless torture, his bare muscles pressed against the cold metal of the chair, listening the probes buzzing as the steel arms lowered and cloaked over his blood stained face, his right hand trembled with tiny tremors as the breath of his lungs was sucked out when the shackles clasped and he was forced to recline backwards._

_"Steve..." he whispered as watery lines of blood trickled from the swollen corners of his mouth. "Steve...I'm coming home..." he choked out his pitches of weakened words; only then to __receive a slap of a backhand, heating the skin with the invasive pain of shocks, making his jaw grew partly numb, until onslaught reached the bare, stiffened muscles of his chest._

_"Steve is a dead," the virulent response of his superior echoed in his ears. "The American super-soldier died...He failed his mission." the man coldy added, snapping the restraints over his heaving torso into place; and he couldn't budge a muscle; his chest strained and breath hitched as the encroaching, horrific droning noises of machines rippled through his pulsing veins. "Let's pretend it's just a bad memory-a nightmare that can be easily erased...Just like a soldiers name on a grave."_

_He became captive under a pair of grayish-blue eyes, burning with cruelty like toxic blight melting the snow, watching him slowly contort in thralls of agony in the torture chair, his face twisted with excruciating pain._

_ The penetration of agony punctured into his heart, as he felt the smoldering tears roll steadily down his bruised and ashen cheekbones. His face stung and he tried to force force out screaming protests, but he was rendered voiceless, condemned to silence._

_"Bite down on the mouth guard..."_

_His response was quick and clear. Blood and salt mixed in the water building over the tip of his tongue. He opened his mouth just enough to spite on the floor. With his act of unbreakable defiance he revealed to his handlers, that he still was human. Another slap in the face jerked his head to one side as he yelped, but the knells of his pain ended when the rudder mold of a mouth guard pushed over the upper row of his teeth, and his head was held into place. The metal probes swiveled into an upside down position, latched over his temples. The vibrations rattled his skull; he felt bile making its course up his throat as he screamed out his fear at the malevolent enforcer-the new director who spoke in American tongue._

_"You cannot break me!" he screamed in rage against the mouth guard, he was relenting as the electric shock waves melted inside is eye sockets. "I'm a kid from Brooklyn...My name is James...Buch..."_

_He could not contain the tears; his skin felt charred, heartbeat skipped and soul ripped into threads. He closed his eyes, fighting with every breath, until his tongue grew brittle and everything he had kept in his mind faded into red pulses of confusion, order and death. The blood in his veins hardened and emotions erased in the surges of volts jolting against his heart._

_ Finally, after jerking violently, the young soldier gave into the pain; __allowing it to consume him, until all he felt was pure, feral, sickening, brutal and morbid fire turn into fathoms ice that coated over his marred soul, inescapable and damaged...Winter._

He drifted out his mania when a pounding force of a leather fist rammed into his jaw, making him double over as blood stained the snow underneath. Vision dimmed for a few seconds, as he stared up at Von Shulter cracking his knuckles with a sadistic expression painted on his tanned face.

The Soldier grunted aloud, and with an upsurge of rage, he flipped back onto his boots, and readied his body into a fighting stance. He barred his teeth like a fierce wolf, snarling under his breath and charged at opponent with a bellow of disgust. Nothing could restrain him, he was untamed, he removed his knife, and threatened Shulter with a fast sway of his blade in the frigid air. Angrily, he clenched his metal fist, his ire and adrenaline spiked as he lunged at the operative with his blue eyes darkened into full pupil, no white, just blackness.  
><em><br>_"The director wants to give you another treatment," Shulter smirked cockily at him; eyeing his knife as the sound of his knuckles crackled under stiff leather gloves. He circled the Winter Soldier, daring the assassin to break out of his resistance to attack. "You've been lacking discipline ever since that worthless brat came here." he spat his back teeth, he looked at the operative with unyielding eyes, glaring underneath tendrils of dark hair, he reeked of sweat. Shulter's sadistic words found a way to jab against his heart, pushing his buttons and using the girl as his the impassive look on the assassin's menacing face, Shulter pressed, "Tell me, Soldier, do you have feelings for the little brat?"

Suspicious, the Winter Solider spat out blankly, "She is my mission," he responded with a gravelly voice and gripped his metal fingers around the handle into the tightness of his clutch. "Why do you care about how I feel?"

"I do not care," Shulter shot back, scoffing, and he watched his opponent's blue eyes flare with hatred. "You know that you are just a drone. A soulless husk who obeys for us. You are nothing, but a ghost of winter. And that little friend of yours will soon join you once she's put into a grave." he effortlessly gestured his hand, to Rollins holding the child's tiny arms against his mid-section, she was thrashing and protesting in Russian, but the operative smirked in amusement, and released his arm lock, watching her fall into the down, Rollins crouched on his boots, and grabbed a fistful of her dark hair, yanking her head back up, blood dripped from her blue tinged lips, and her brown eyes glistened with tears.

Shulter smirked, and aimed the nozzle of his pistol at the trembling child, his face emotionless, and eyes sooty black, as his jaw clenched against the biting wind, he forced out a heaving breath, "You want to feel again, then I will make you feel every emotion possible when I pull the trigger." he glared down at her coldly, tightening his curled finger over the trigger and threatened to pull it back. "All it takes is one bullet to become the difference maker...She will die in...One,...Two..."

"STOP!"

The Winter Soldier snarled, breath exploded out of his lungs, his eyes grew vicious and dark as he charged directly at Shulter, shifting as his metal arm twisted into a grappling hook, and he struck the man down, coiling Shulter's neck into a choke hold, his flesh hand squeezed the weak points of the wrist bones, as he applied harsh pressure and jerked the arm upwards, listening the bones crack as rueful smirk crossed over his lips. He made the gun drop into the snow.

"You kill me...She dies," Shulter warned, pulling another handgun from his side hostler and jabbing under the Soldier's chin. His finger taunt on the trigger. He was waiting for the reaction. His dark eyes shifted a glance at the commander who stood at the chained fence, giving him a curt of a nod as he waited. "You think just because you've got a metal arm-you're untouchable. I can see it your eyes...You're weak...and becoming useless."

Abashed by those condemning words pouring out Shulter's mouth, it felt every pitch of breath sear in his blood, and he seethed as saliva gathered against the spaces of his gnashing teeth.

He pressed his knee into the other man's hard stomach, coiling the muscles as his metal hand, made the droning mechanical sounds as he reached for the operative's throat.

It was a form of deadly combat, the struggle to stay focus was impending, his blood became molten and eyes became a noxious hue of steel as he clasped his hand over Shulter's throat, squeezing the pulse, as he moved the bones underneath skin.

He was becoming bloodthirsty and uncontrollable, if another operative tried to remove him; he slammed his metal into their torso. He wanted to observe Shulter die his cold hands, to stare into the whiteness of death, and hear the last breath.

_Kill. Destroy. Terminate._

Red fog consumed his vision as he snarled and pressed against bones, feeling no concept of his actions, just the power of his bionic arm forcing weight into the neck of his opponent...blood pumping...bones snapping and breath fading...he was monster. His mind twisted, not catching up with reality, not feeling the churning of bile in his stomach. Confused, his blue eyes widened and lips parted and there was blood dripping over the metal plates, and he blanched violently backwards at the moment he listened to sobbing permeating the air.

He released his choke hold, and he stared down, heaving out heavily pants of breath and watched Shulter's eye roll back into his skull.

Remnants of tears fell over his lips, as he jerked back with a sharp gasp, and shunned himself from her weepy eyes, burrowing his face into the crook of his arm.

Rollins clapped at the success of the mission, and lifted the displaced child, seizing her wrist, "Well done, Soldier. The director will be pleased." He placed his gloved hand along her jaw, forcing her to stare at the macabre of blood painted over the snow and said with a vile flick of his tongue, "How do you like him now, sweetheart?"

She tore her eyes away from the morbid sight of a lifeless body, digging her face into his leather jacket, hands clawing desperately as the smell of spilled blood wavered in the air.

"No," The Winter Soldier said in crackling voice, his own tears blurred his eyes, she refused to look at him. "I didn't mean do this...You weren't suppose to see this..." He chanced himself a sharp glance, and his blue eyes leveled with the watery maroon smeared over his clenched knuckles.

Shaking his head miserably, he tried to reach for her, but two HYDRA agents blocked his path, and he watched Rollins pick her up in his arms and take her away. He knew that she would be lost to him.

"NO!" he roared, thrashing his body wildly against the arms pressed over his chest, preventing him from racing for her. "You can't do this to her...She's my mission," he seethed out viciously, blood dripped from his frozen lips, his voice growing throaty and weak. "She is my friend..." He gazed back at her fearfully, tears falling steadily down his rough cheeks as a needle jabbed into the side of his neck.

His eyes fell shut and he poured out his emotions and blood in the snow.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

* * *

><p>Warm tears solidified against the rough skin of his jaw; he allowed the falling snow to bury him as his metal hand curled; scarping in the frozen ground. He needed something to hold on to in his dire moments of feeling utterly unraveled by the tantalizing emotions, thralls of numbness and the aches of his scattering heart.<p>

It never hurt so much.

When the Winter Soldier closed his eyes, daring himself to slip back into the mindless void; he was pulled back into the emptiness, sitting in a corner, knees tucked close to his scarred chest, and his blue eyes paled into a hue of sullen white as his dilated pupils captured the shafts of flickering lights caressing over his bruised and exposed flesh.

He was forced to the listen to the emblazon cries of torture, droning echoes of machines and screams of humanity being stripped and reshaped into sentinels bearing HYDRA's mark on their skin.

There had been restless nights when he smelt the lingering stench of dried blood smeared over his metal knuckles; the room was cloaked with dingy stagnant that intermixed with a encroaching smell of death. So often he'd listened to the heart-wrenching screams resounding from the skeletal halls of his asylum Fellow operatives. Some sounded mostly human, but others had mechanical pitch ripping from their throats.

Most of the tortured and starving captives he saw when his superiors granted him access to leave his confinement, were lifeless husks of programmed machines. No heart beats, no emotion was written on their paled and frozen faces...just a simple and permanent expression of hardened order. This array of devolving humanity into an emotionless legion did not avail inside of him. The forsaken were lost into the weaves of HYDRA; but he had a chance to wield freedom once again.

Through the abyss of crimson, he had felt the memories programmed inside of him. He knew that he was taken as boy, away from his mother and was given to HYDRA. His handlers told him the details, forcing him to believe in deceiving lies that kept his heart and mind at an impasse. For as long he could remember, those fragments of falsehood had been unnatural to grasp in the welcoming darkness of his prison.

He had spent many nights consumed by sheltered pain, listening to the hollow growls of his emptied stomach, and shedding tears of anguish when the faint images of a frail, sickly boy with short golden hair regressed from his sheared mind. The boy had warm and deep blue eyes, the color of crystal that took away all doubt and made him feel stronger.

He blinked, searching for clarity in his vision, but the haze of tears coated over his heavy lidded eyes. He tried to blank out the mantras and focus on nothing. He wanted to the abyss to consume him, swallow him whole, and devour him.

He didn't want his friend to become a part of biting coldness, programming and the pain. He wanted to give her freedom.

Feeling the clusters of thoughts dim, his metal fingers shakily probed over the ground; he lowered his dismal gaze, allowing the pain to build in his temples. He stared at the drops of maroon, feeling each one depart from his wounds, and rigid lips. His body was still against the chained fence, and his head had begun to pound with trepidation and torrent thoughts of delirium grind against his skull; making him fall back into a merciless prison of ice.

HYDRA tampered with his thoughts, weaving their own ideals into his memory codes, keeping his under their control. While they watched him shattered when the threads of his soul twisted and knotted within, creating a barrier to trap all emotion and allow him to feel nothing. They never stopped him from receiving pain, his injections were persistent, and if he showed resistance to their orders, he'd get slapped by his high superiors until blood strained over his chiseled and bruised cheekbones and heavy-well defined jawline.

_Defiance__._

He never remembered the details, just tiny fragments of memory that always took him to place where he would wake up screaming in the night and recalling what he once was. It's a sanctuary of darkness; he always had felt the iciness of the of inhumane malevolence encase over his bones, stared into the void, and listened to the sounds of terror as humanity becomes butchered into mechanical slaves.

Death was always welcomed in his gray shaded world, and he tasted the savage nature of the ruthless killer they constructed by torturous experiments, operations and mind swiping boil into his pulsating blood and evolutionary process takes hold and injections warred his own instincts, it all became necessary for his survival.

Remnants of her innocent face shadowed his thoughts, her brown eyes that were filled with life and hope; faded into a murky darkness, blocking out the kindling light of her soul.

_Pure._

The Winter Soldier didn't remember much from yesterday's experience...he remembered the ice encasing over his bruised limbs, hardening over his raw skin and forcing the blood to freeze in his veins.

He felt the tears gliding down his cheeks, he attempted to stop them, unsure how to react to the folds of emotions consuming his body; he blundered out his sorrows unceremoniously, and then sobbed uncontrollably as the iciness of realization dawned upon him. He knew the little girl was going to become lost soul-a nameless and desensitized weapon.

_Inorganic._

"No," he seethed out monstrously, clawing violently through the strands of hair which dangled over his face. Rage stressed in his throat as blood leaked from the corner of his tightened lips; he rammed his fists into the ground, thrashing the dusty snow in all directions. His heart sped up a few notches in his heaving chest, breath grew into rapid pants, and voice cracked into a shuddering cry. "She doesn't deserve this...She deserves to be free!"

He jolted himself awake, bathing in his own sweat; feeling every fiber in his trembling body fuse with anger. He was finally grasping the sensations of feeling, no more searing coldness, but hot blood and pulses of a heartbeat. He was feeling true human emotions again.

"I have to save her..." he whispered out a frosty breath, swiping his gloved hand over his quirking lips, smearing the blood across his sharpened jaw.

Before the asset could ease his full weight up, he felt the cold leather gloved hands of masked men seize him roughly; a pin prick of a needle entered his blood stream. "I have to free her..." he bared his teeth at the dark haired operative, and jerked against the arm lock, feeling the heaviness cross over his neck.

Within twenty seconds of arriving into the chamber, he was being dragged forward to the metal doors, carelessly, at an inhumane regard. He was man handled; his black garments ripped off of him, and then replaced by what look like Kevlar and black bullet resistant armor.

The leather jacket zipped up to his neckline, constricting his chest into a stiff barrier; his messy brown hair framed over his face and hostlers strapped to his slender hips and muscled thighs. He armed with lethal weapons to make him a walking armory when engaging enemy territory, combat knifes, guns, and then a heavy scoped rifle was placed in his metal hand, loaded up with untraceable shells and released from the safety lock.

A hard graphite mask was placed over his clammy jaw, sealing his lips as he once again became voiceless to protest.

"Human resilience is an infectious disease that ruins order."

The Winter Soldier's face hardened with a tense glare at the coldness in the voice aloud in the shadows. Agent Rollins stepped from his hiding place, and then he watched the obscurity of menacing glower melt into blue fire. Choking up a breath; he fought to release his voice against the barrier enclosed over his mouth. "Tell me where you're keeping her?"

"I assure you the girl is safe. She was frightened by you sudden outburst. You cost me a good agent." The firm voice in the doorway drew his attention.

The director entered the room, flanked by two nervous assistants, approaching the steel table at one corner of the room.

He was dressed in his usual color of a charcoal gray suit and his expertly polished black shoes. His aging face flexed as wrinkles curved at the sides of his mouth. His mussed ginger hair twirled against the crown of his head, as a faint breeze of the chilling outside invaded the enclosed area. His grayish eyes looked down at the pliant asset, with a glimmer of a morbid disappointment.

Halting in his steps at the table, he opened the box on atop of the table, and lifted a chained necklace out; he walked to the Winter Soldier with a confident and haughtily stride. He froze in front of the younger man, cuffing his hands behind his back, and kept himself positioned into a regal stance.

Pursing his lips, he spoke in a direct tone. "Do you even know who this child is?' he questioned, staring at the stillness welled in temperance blue irises, inches from him.

"The girl you saved is the future of HYDRA's reign. Her blood is precious to us. She will reshape this world into our order. And I need you to stay away from her..." The director spoke softly, in a low and instructive voice that was a sharp threatening edge to his normal colluding tone.

His sordid words were like knife, molten steel penetrating the layers of the asset's heart, the defiance to misbehave was still lodged in his brain, but he wouldn't tolerate the poison seeping from his superiors mouth, the potent urge to kill was clawing in his veins. "You have been subjected to emotions that are making you lose focus on the missions. You killed a a top operative yesterday without my consent. You disobeyed because you wanted to protect her from us..."

The Winter Soldier managed to give the director a curt of a nod, even though he felt the rage bubbling in his veins. "Yes," his muffled voice responded in a rough tone.

The director took a step back, "I see," he replied, lifting the necklace, holding it before the asset's eyes, it dangled before him, gleaming in his darkened pupils.

He watched it sway, still and tensed.

"This belongs to her?" he questioned, his voice low. Unsure. Timid.

The locket was old and tarnished with a name engraved at the back. A name that made his heart swell as he looked deeply at the letters. "I want you to say her name...Let it roll off your tongue...because it will be the last you name you will remember it."

_Avrora._

He stared at it for a long, long moment. He bit his bottom lip. He was hesitant to answer. He couldn't say her...Name. It selfish for him to know it without her remembering her birthright. A clamor of buzzing in his mind configured with his hazardous thoughts. His remained locked against the hard texture of his mask.

Sensing his insubordination, the director reached out his hand, tangling it into the mutinous assassin's wild mass of hair, yanking the strands as he listened to a small yelp pierce from the other man's lips.

"Her name is Avrora," he barked, tugging hard, jerking the asset's head downward, before ramming his knee hard into graphite mask. "Aurora..."

Bones into his stiff jaw jostled at the impact, the Winter Soldier instantly staggered backwards; losing his balance and crashing to the concrete floor.

"She will never belong to you," he coughed up watery blood; his lips were scraped from the shards of graphite digging into his soft flesh. "You can't own her...She has a life. She is pure." he barked, tasting the blood seep in between his clenched teeth. Rollins lunged in automatically; picking him up by the neck, he snarled viciously as the constricting gloved hands squeezed against his windpipe.

He couldn't fight back, not when he knew Avrora's life was hanging on a thin line.

"Come on, you pathetic excuse of soldier," Rollins discharged out in a seething breath, listening to the bones crack against his fingertips. His eyes darkened into murderous indent as the enraged assassin writhed and thrashed to break out of his hold. "If HYDRA didn't need your sorry ass...I would break your neck right now!" He growled, and twisted his arm, slamming the other man to the floor.

The director moved away, and leaned his stern posture against the wall, folding his arms as he watched the sight of his best agent take down the greatest assassin and expert marksman in the history of strategic warfare.

"You will follow my orders and you will finish you missions...Or you can watch her scream?" his voice raised as he addressed the details of the situation, and then he narrowed his gaze at the drops of blood escaping from the Winter Soldier's mouth. "Tomorrow you will have access to see her for a short period of time. After you will watch as the new reformation of HYDRA is birth once her blood has been extracted. You will not fight or show emotion. Fail to disobey this command and the girl with be harmed."

Spewing out more blood, the Winter Soldier nodded silently, and Rollins released his choke hold. "I will find a way to stop you," he growled in a throaty voice, clamping his eyes shut, he knew that her existence was now in the clutches of HYDRA, and he failed his directive...She will die.

He stood up to his full height of five-eleven, and released a breathless declaration, his unnerved eyes morphed into blue embers against the umbra of his messy hair. "I will not fail her..."

The director marched quickly to him, and slapped his face with a forceful backhand. For a long second the pain seared his jaw bone. He turned his head and glowered dangerously at his superior.

"She is my mission..." he retched out, dizzy and unstable with his emotions. "My friend..."

"Then you will fail her..."

Hearing those soul jarring words enter his ears, the Winter Soldier hung his head low, and whispered out her name, gently and faint, "Avrora."


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

* * *

><p>There was no bright and welcoming shaft of daylight caressing over her paled face; she felt no sense of contentment warming over her pounding her heart.<p>

Everything had been abject to numbness that rippled through her bones, pulsating tremors of pain mixed with the feverish chills that had ran rapid in her blood.

She felt dead in sleep, and yet she was aware of the droning masculine voice humming in her ears.

Dread unraveled in her veins, emotions were being chipped away from the desperation luring her back to a conscious state. She dared herself to open her eyes. Instead she felt the deep-seated ache tense in between her dark eyebrows, and the unsavory taste of metallic was slithering down the dry walls of her throat. It only grew worse as she shifted her tiny frame against the cold steel penetrating through her spine.

The fogginess of delirium began to lift and she groaned, feeling a touch of someone's gloved hand run over her bare and blemished flesh of her shoulder. Although she tried to react, her mind was still hadn't caught the concept of reality, with the return of her detesting imprisonment. Trembling, eyelashes unsealed against her cheeks and met the dimming grayness of unnatural light. She trembled against the cold steel, fingers curled over her wrists and leather straps bounded her to the table. Heart pounding, she lifted her head up slightly and glanced room the room.

The torture chamber was large, murky water leaked from a contortion of pipes above the lit area, and elevated tables were vacant and chairs with lingering horrors of inhumane punishment. She was restrained on an operating table, it was tarnished with smears of blood, and the circular light hanging inches above her body flickered when she managed to open her chilled lips and whimpered out a faint cry as fear encompassed over her. She wanted to scream at the top of her lungs, but she struggled to protest when she brown eyes saw a clear sack of serum attached to a metal pole near the right side of the table.

"Come now, little one there is no reason to have fear. It hurts for a short time." The monotonous and sadistic voice echoed in her pulsing ears; she blinked and stared at a man in a white coat lifting medical tubing off the cart.

"You will get use to feeling pain. You will become numb to these sensations. Your body is going to accept it once we're done purifying your blood."

She felt the stirrings, red flags were going up in her mind as the length of the tube clutched in his white latex hands stretched and snapped, she jerked against the straps, breath was growing erratic and feverish sweat escaped from her pores. Her skin changed into a hue of ghostly white as she felt all the blood drain from her cheeks and locked her watery dark eyes on the needle.

"No..." She mustered up a strangled plea voice fading, shaking her head. "I don't want this..."

"The fear will pass. There will be no long term damage. Just perfection." a calming voice lulled her to turn head her head and threw the unwelcome presence a tiny, vicious growl, reacting to the tone as she felt the coldness of his words crawl over her tightening bones. She blinked and stared at a man dressed in business suit of gray with ginger colored hair. His voice hardened with wrinkles and his dark blue eyes displayed no empathy. To her young mind he was a monster.

A demon.

The director simply leaned his tall stature against the door, he moved in nonchalant pace towards the table, regal steps filled with purpose. He stood at her left side, and gently placed his large hand through her chopped strands of brown hair, she tried to surpass a chill that shot through the ridges of her spine when his fingers brushed coldness over her neck.

"You are doing fairly well, little girl, I have become impressed by you." he crooned in a light parental tone, soothing the tension bubbling in her veins; he knew how to calm the weak and manipulate his victims before the blood transfusions.

The director kept his grayish-blue eyes steady on her despondent gaze of caramel, and then he nodded curtly at the doctor to dab her arm with a cotton swab drenched with alcohol. The older man followed his orders, methodically, and applied the cold swab to the skin of the area where the intravenous will be inserted. When the skin was coated with alcohol, he prepared the catheter for insertion.

Her head whipped backwards against the table a hard glare of caramel overcame her face. Her lips broke and a small whimper managed to crack through the heated barriers of her throat. She glanced at the intravenous drip and the tubes hanging to her side. "No," she slurred, grinding her teeth in confusion and distress, her heart rate was increasing and skin growing colder. The middle-aged doctor placed his hand on her chest, pinning her against the table as he made a slit in her left hand, pierced through the strong veins and attached the tube to the catheter.

The director stood beside the table and rested his palm atop of her forehead. A slow smile developed over his lips as he watched her drift with heaviness glaring in her brown eyes. She convulsed against the eruption of pain consuming her body, the serum dissolving her humanity with every ounce of it that pumped into her.

"Rest Avora," he whispered in a fatherly tone. "It will all be over soon."

* * *

><p>Standing in the guarded cell, the Winter Soldier felt the anger claw in his veins as he settled his unnerved blue eyes on the tanned operative standing in the doorway of his enclosed cell. He didn't move an inch. He couldn't escape from the wrathful glare of dark brown eyes burying into his skull the moment their gazes locked. They refused to break eye contact.<p>

He clenched his jaw hard, tensing as his face became obscured with resentment and disgust. He became absent from emotions, silently calculating his next engagement of attack.

His vacant eyes roamed over Rumlow's medium size and bulky frame, pin-pointing the weak spots that were exposed to his eye level. Olden scars from his past, fractured bones underneath his Kevlar and black leather arm. He knew all his faults. He knew Rumlow thought of he was a loyal lap dog because of his corrupted mind. The operative thought the Winter Soldier was indifferent, spoiled and defiant. That was a cover to hide his true morals. He wasn't a normal man.

His life was never a thought in the minds of his superiors. He created on an operating table, trained under the guidance of Armin Zola and Baron Zemo. His blood was cleansed with the serum and marred arm replaced by alloy plated limb that attached to his nerves and functioned as weapon during combat assaults. At one time he hated it. He wanted to rip the metal arm out of the socket, but after injections and mindless tortures he disowned himself from humanity and respected his commanders and followed orders.

The love he observed during missions was just a sense, not a feeling that he carried into his heart. He had no heart.

He was programmed not to feel, his mind alerted to harness the control of all emotions and froze his own heart. Zola created a weapon-an ultimate assassin to purge the disease from the world. The Winter Soldier's future was planned out since the day he came out of the ice. He was the equalizer of HYDRA's new order.

He was opposite symbol of Captain America. The red star painted on his left bicep represented blood. He was trained to kill anyone who dared to stand in his way. It had always been necessary to rake away lives that were meaningless in his cold eyes. Innocent, weak and infer. Those types of people were targets-not humans or souls. In his inhumane glare they were already dead.

Stepping closer, Rumlow smugly smirked at him and kept his stance less hostile. His face was dark and twisted, creating the illusion of sadistic madness. For a long second he kept his stare evenly on the Winter Soldier. He spoke with a hiss of spite, "I have to admit that brat is very beautiful." he taunted, rubbing his lips. "I think when she's all done screaming I might play with her."

There was flash of black and gleaming silver in the dim shadows of the cell. The Winter Soldier was quick to react, he stalked closer to Rumlow's muscular form leaned against the wall. His metal plated twisted and contorted into a solid and unbreakable mass and thrusted his hand outward, grabbing the operative by the scruff of his neck and hoisted him inches off the floor.

Rumlow's dark eyes widen as he tried to claw at the bionic shoulder, but the Winter Soldier was merciless to the silent pleas of release. He squeezed his cold fingers over the other man's neck, moving the veins under skin and then spun him violently into the air.

Rumlow landed hard on his face, skin touched the cement as squishing noise followed. He rolled onto his back, grasping for breath with black splotches consuming his bleary vision. His upper lip was split from the impact, and blood dripped over his stubble covered jaw. He weakly tried to life himself up, but every bone locked when he felt the icy glare of the asset over him. He applied pressure onto his flank, holding his hand at the spot, and gritting his teeth as he lifted his hazed eyes to meet the lethal glower of the Winter Soldier.

"She won't survive." he spat out blood onto the floor. He still wanted to play the antagonist. "The brat's little body can only take so much pain."

Roaring out his rage, the Winter Soldier bit into his tongue, his blood sizzled and the urge to kill the arrogant mercenary was becoming unrestrained. He knew that his intimation methods were becoming invasive. He needed to unleash his anger and show no mercy. Instead of using his guns and knives, he used his body to wound the operative. He wanted Rumlow to feel his wrath and butcher him for the poisonous words he spoke towards Avora. His friend. His mission."I make you feel pain." he seethed, his voice harsh and vicious. "I will break your body." he gritted, his face morphed into expression of dangerous animal.

He stomped his boots close with encroaching steps towards Rumlow. Then, he paused for a second, looked down with darken stare, waited for his opponent to move under his shadow, and without a warning he raised his boot high, turning his leg into the position of a straight roundhouse kick. He chanced himself a glare to Rumlow's pleading brown eyes, but he didn't care. He was protecting Avora. With a fierce and abrasive growl erupting from the back of his throat, he kicked and missed Rumlow's skull by an inch, his boot just grazed over the spiked raven hair. He lowered his foot, and hunched his shoulders into a crouching stance. 'If you ever talk about her like that..." he breathed out lucid fire, "I will fill you up with lead."

Rumlow spat a gob of blood onto his boot, indignantly. "You better start pulling trigger now, soldier, because she is about to know what real pain really feels like..."

The Winter Soldier's blue eyes enlarged and shifted to the doorway. He clenched his metal hand into a trembling fist. He drew out sharp seething breaths with his jaw tightening.

Ire was brewing, red clouded out his eyes like as if blood dripped over his pupils, simmering beneath the surface. It was seeping out of his muscles, warming his skin with feverish heat as he raged across the floor.

Releasing a deep and wolfish growl, he rammed his fist through the wall, breaking the cement; it shattered into tiny shards on the floor, exploding and showering over Rumlow's face. He pulled his hand out, leaving a huge hole in the wall.

"Avora!" he screamed in livid rage, heart thumping with erratic beats and eyes welled with tears. He twisted around and stared angrily at the 9 mm attached to Rumlow's side hostler. Without rational thought, he became overwhelmed by a flood of emotions and lifted the operative up with one arm; disarming him and throwing his body into the wall.

The Winter Soldier checked the barrel, and held it into a tight clutch. Waves of carnage crashed over his heart as he paced to the door and headed to the direction of a child screaming out for him.

He followed her distressed cries.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

* * *

><p>Focusing on the mission, it was always the one thought that consumed his disciplined mind; there were no alternatives to substitute choice and warring impulse that ravaged through out his body.<p>

He followed orders, obeyed the words the machines and high volts of agonizing torture had programmed into his brain. He became numb, and always felt the transfiguration of his morality harden into steel, recreated to serve one purpose-subornation.

After torturous operations, and dissecting the marred and broken bones of his left arm, the Winter Soldier remained silent for seventy years, never unleashing his defiance; afraid to feel the blow of death surge into his frigid veins.

In truth, he knew that he served a fate worse than death; his soul was imprisoned into a weapon made of human flesh and alloy plating. He was a machine that was switched on for a short period of usage, and then placed back into frozen storage for the next mission.

Inside the barriers of the Winter Soldier, the man who he once had known himself to be wanted to feel warmth, instead of coldness, and to take someone's hand without breaking their wrist. Avora, his only friend that he avowed to protect, she was his light out of the icy labyrinth, his freedom against the shackles that were bounded to his sabotaged heart.

Making his way through the compound, in fervent strides, the Winter Soldier stalked in hushed and systematical steps down the darkened corridor of the compound; his eyes gleamed in the thick shadows, revealing the swirls of molten blue behind steams of matted, dark chestnut. He froze in his ghostly steps, calculating his next plan of invasive attack.

Tension was flowing in the air, and the stench of fear hovered around him. He could smell the sweat pouring out of the sentinels guarding the steel bars of the 'subornation room' and he acutely listened to the rapid pulses of their blood, watching their regal stances change with uneasy balance.

He waited with patience as a hunter, crouching down on to his armored knees, shoulder blades tightened underneath his garb of restricting leather, and his metal hand gripped over the cement. The game of risk wasn't an option, not when Avora's life was in the clutches of HYDRA's control. He had to be efficient and quick with his assault, and not allow himself to let his guard down, and take out everyone that stood in his way.

Inhaling a deep breath, the Winter Soldier leveled his luminous blue eyes at the door, inwardly cringing as the screaming protests of his friend invaded his ears. His heart dropped into the pit of his stomach, blood ran cold as he barred his teeth, and seethed out a rumbling growl that chortled up raw walls of scratchy throat.

His muscles began to constrict with abrasive thralls of pain. His vision darkened, turning everything into hues of blood red, threatening to engulf him with livid blindness of pure and merciless rage.

_'Avora,_' His unspoken words were etched over his heart, and he pulled out his knife from a left pouch at his hip, gripping the handle firmly, as the blade twirled with a slow movement of his fingers. Thoughts of staring at her mutilated body strapped to the chair plagued his mind, distracting and consuming in him with dread folding over his jostling bones.

The hardness of anguish ripped through the steams of his soul that made him feel sick. Quickly, he straightened to his full, intimating height, sucking back another gulp of air, and then advanced closer to doors. Anger and fear pervaded over his menacing face, darkening his blue eyes into slate, causing his muscles to coil with burning sense of remorse.

Advancing in slow and methodical steps, he was interrupted by Rollins standing inches from the door, with a semi-automatic held in his taunt gloved hands.

He knew his comrade and teammate; he knew the weak points and the areas of battle scars. It was all too easy for him, taking down the American operative, Rumlow's partner, and loyal shadow was the first strategy of his attack. His fleshed hand curled into a fist, and intense glare focused intently on the other man's armored torso.

"You're not permitted to enter this area, asset, it's off limits." Rollins discharged out in a gruff voice, cracking his unshaven jaw and glaring downward at the Winter Soldier. He squinted against the dark, dimly lit corridor.

Rollins felt his thinned lips tightened into a firm grimace of disgust and arrogance, and then the powerful urge to take the master assassin was becoming unrestrained to control.

"Return and wait for further instruction. That's an order." he grumbled, withholding his strides as the heart shattering screams amplified around them, intense.

The Winter Soldier knew that he had to seize the moment, listening to Avora's painful howls of torment drove him to the edge. He felt his blood pumping faster, waves of feverish heat lapped over his skin and the metallic flavor of blood consumed his throat. Instinctively, he positioned his body into an attacking stance, his legs parted and the knife flipped in the stale air, intimating the operative.

"I'm not going anywhere," he hissed, his lips twitched with irritation. Livid resentment sharpened his dark pupils like diamonds made of black ice, and his fleshed hand curled into a tight fist, and he felt his fingernails dig into the softness of his palm as the bones of his knuckles cracked and snapped.

"Oh, I know that look all too well, Soldier." Rollins chuckled tartly, dropping his gun to the gun, a loud clang echoed after the metal hit the floor. He twisted his thick neck, a few cracks and he was muscles locked, his pipe like arms raised and fists readied. "Do you want to do dance, old man?" he spat, missing the assassin's right boot. "If you want to see your little friend, then you're going to have to go through me..."

"Fine by me," the Winter Soldier barked at him, feeling anger surge in his veins, bubbling in his gut. He bent his knees, right arm jutted outward, while his metal arm was a fraction of inch to his torso, the tip of the serrated blade was pointing downward, threatening to twist with the fast movement of his hand.

He waited for a few seconds, giving Rollins a chance, a small chance of a quick counter attack, but once he found his opening, he lunged at the towering operative, slashing the knife close to the man's scruffy face, barely slicing his slick jaw. His right flipped, grabbing Rollin's thigh, and squeezed pressure, making the muscle burn under his strength.

Rollins thrashed wildly, jabbing his elbow into the Winter Soldier's hip, but the metal hand clasped over his wrist, bending it upward, the blade shadowing over his lips. "You can't save her. It's too late...She belongs to HYDRA." he yelped out, feeling the circulation in his leg become defeated by a tingling feeling of numbness.

"She is now our little pet to abuse...a worthless pup. If you kill me then she will experience more pain, and that brat will become a lifeless husk and have no damn memory of you. Either way, she will be harmed. Those screams you're hearing, well, that's just the beginning. We both know what comes next."

He pressed his finger over the red star, "It won't be long now until she's on the operating table..." Rollins jeered, smirking at the blank expression shrouded over the assassin's darkened face, relishing the damage of heart ache that was clearly held in the other man's blue eyes.

Gnashing his teeth, the Winter Soldier clamped his jaw hard, feeling his gums burn as he seethed out vicious growl, and drove his blade into Rollin's left thigh, ripping open the flesh as it dragged and sliced through leather and skin. He wanted to see the muscle of HYDRA's band of loyal soldiers bleed out his words. "You're lying..." he roared, breath shot out of his lungs, and his face paled into a unhealthy white.

Then, the Winter Soldier heard the horrific sound of medical saw being switched on, and his heart ceased to beat and plummeted to the floor.

It was all too familiar.

Breath grew erratic, and pulled the knife out of Rollin's leg, and he stomped his boots to the door, leaving the operative to attend to his deep, bloody wound. Halting at the door, he brought his ear close to the steel, and tuned in the cries of the child harboring him to engage his rescue mission.

"You go in there...My men will fire." Rollin's warned, limping with one hand pressed on his injured leg. "Can you risk that?"

"Yes," He answered, without hesitation, and barricaded his senses from the wafting smell of spilled blood. Her blood.

His pulse elevated, the sharp clenched of his jaw fastened into a hard set of flesh, and eyes watered as he unleashed a scream, ripping the air out of his lungs. It happened so fast, flashes of red followed the pounding of his skull, and he used his metal fist like a battering-ram, punching through the steel, and the circuitry and alloy chrome of his arm constricted into a solid mass as he penetrated the door, ripping it off the hinges.

With a feral eruption of a deafening and crackling roar; he violently tossed the steel into the other direction and accessed the room in heavy, dangerous strides.

Shifting his hardened blue eyes; ignoring the weapons aimed at him, the Soldier came to a halt when he stared at Avora strapped to the medical table with rubber tubing attached to both wrists. Her beautiful face was growing pale with every ounce that taken out of her. They were draining her.

"AVORA!" he screamed, pure horror folded over his face. His glistening eyes leveled to the tears rolling down her blemished cheeks.

He saw the circular bladed saw plugged in, near a pair medical scissors, and a couple of different sized syringes filled with unknown substance he couldn't comprehend. His chest rattled, he was breathless, and felt the unbearable urge to spew out bile. "YOU'RE KILLING HER!"

"Stand down, soldier."

He whipped his head around, dark tresses lashed over his eyes and face contorted into a beastly glower. His chest heaved, and animosity submerged out of his veins. He was slowly entering a killing rampage, his eyes moved over the operatives and assistants.

Calculating, he threw the blood stained knife into one man's throat, slicing the vein, as the target staggered backwards, holding his neck, and choking on his breath. However, the other armed agents had him marked, and safety locks clicked aback.

Undaunted, the Winter Soldier took a step forward, locking his intense blue eyes at the director standing next to the table. His lips morphed into a scowl, and metal hand pointed at the clear sack of blood wired to an EKG machine. They were performing a blood transfusion. He saw it happen a few years back, with another agent, but never a young child. He had to stop it. "Free her...Hook me up instead..." he swallowed down his plea, smoldering tears filmed over his eyes. His drumming heart was breaking into pieces as he listened to her pulse decrease in levels. "Don't let her die."

The director smirked coldly back at him, stroking his fingers through Avora's chopped brown locks. "I'm surprised with your resilience to the programming. I thought we made the alterations of your mind to feel nothing, but I guess we made a small error." He caressed the girl's face with a fatherly touch, and sighed calmly, "We have no intention of killing her, but perfecting this life into the new face of the new world order. You see, sometimes when the world falls into ruin, you have to tear the old foundations down and start rebuilding with the smallest of stones."

The Winter Soldier furrowed his eyebrows; he choked out a sob and narrowed his eyes at Avora.

"Avora is no ordinary stray, she is our salvation and carries the blood of our supreme leader." he smiled contently, wiping the tears off her cheeks. Then, he revealed the hidden truth, "This girl carries the bloodline of Red Skull...His granddaughter...The sole heir of HYDRA."

All color from his flushed skin drained when the shocking revelation slashed against his heart. His knees wobbled, balance unsteady and he crashed to his knees, and felt everything dissolve around him.

The orphaned child he saved from bitterness of the cold was now a treasured memory; he knew within the coming hours, she would be given fully to HYDRA...A emotionless vessel to fulfill her grandfather's reckoning of inhumane crimes and destruction.

He lowered his head, and listened to her weakened voice carry thorough out the room as she repeated the words the director whispered into her ear.

"...Hail...Hail HYDRA."


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

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><p>"Hail HYDRA..."<p>

He blankly stared at the muzzle of the automatic in front of him, waiting to hear the safety unlock and the discharge of the trigger, trying desperate to block out the images of her ashen face as she was fading before his bleary eyes. It was rebirth. Her life was draining up of her and being replaced by HYDRA's poison-the collection blood samples of Red Skull. She was becoming a reincarnation of her debased grandfather, her innocent mind would be alerted into his preserved thoughts and her existence and memories erased. It was a parasite infecting her, eating into the imprinted codes of her DNA strands and configuring into a morbid abomination -a soulless vessel without the understanding of emotion and reason.

"On your feet, soldier," said the director pacing away from the table, his polished shoes tapping on the cement flooring. His fingers snapped, and a stool was wheeled before him. Elegantly, he sat down, and extended out his hand, grabbing the Winter Soldier's jaw, and pressing his fingers hard into the bone, almost separating the young man's lips. His deep grayish blue eyes narrowed with a riled expression. "Your compliance is the key reason why this child is being harmed. You are the primary fault of her pain." The Soldier felt his strength beginning to slip. "You were ordered to stand down from the mission. The girl was supposed to be seized by Rumlow. Not you. I can see that your levels of defiance towards following my orders have been breached since our last session when I gave you orders to avoid human contact."

"I didn't mean to disobey," the Winter Soldier returned with a shed of hesitation in his low voice. His eyebrows furrowed and blue eyes watered as the pressure tightening in his jaw bones. His thoughts were addled, as much as his emotions that had been crammed inside a space of his heart. A new feeling arose within him, as he managed to spare a glance at Avora, tears rolled steadily down his smooth face. He wouldn't stand for cruelty and enslavement. Not when it came to his friend. "I couldn't watch her die. Not out there-Not in here."

"You think there is way out for her? There is no freedom. She belongs to HYDRA. You belong back in the ice. And I hate to do this, but it the only way to restore you back into our weapon." The director's face came closer, an inch, as he lowered his grip, and enclosed his left hand over the other man's jugular, feeling his unsteady pulse. He shook his head slowly, before adding. "The world is changing, people need to coward in fear, and you are the symbol of our power. You are perfection, controlled by our ideals of rebuilding new foundations of a birthing world, and turning the old one into ruins. We can't allow you to become human again. There is too much at stake."

The assassin gritted his teeth, viciously.

"Don't waste your strength on me. We both know that you won't have victory. You're not a soldier." The director's eyes gleamed with unsavory hue of blue. "No memory of your true existence. Tortured and imprisoned in a reanimation chamber, maybe you should consider your choice of fighting against my authority. It's not just your life I hold in my hands. Are you human enough to make the sacrifice and give her freedom while your blood spills on this floor? My men are just watching for the order to pull their triggers. All it takes in one word to become the difference maker."

The Winter Soldier's eyes grew heavy with the film of tears. For some reason those cold words felt worse than a wielding knife being jabbed into his heart. "I can be a monster, destroy lives and make children scream."

He snapped his fingers, and the assistant squeezed Avora's arm, getting her to yelp in pain. "That's a devolving sound of your failure-Listen to her cries for mercy. Tell me if you feel them?" He scowled, twisted, and settled his darken eyes on the rattled asset.

The Winter Soldier wrenched his eyes away, as much as he could, and fastened his lips into a hard grimace.

"I..." His cracked voice pitched up and then faded in his throat. "I don't want to see her in pain...Make it stop." He snapped his eyes down, bowing his head and sucking in deep breaths, trying to regain his composure.

As he lowered his fists to his sides, he positioned his body into stance of subornation-one armored knee pad pressed against the cement, before clamping his eye lids shut to darkened out the brightness of the room.

"Make it stop." he snarled. "She won't survive. She's not strong enough." He hissed while listening to her shrills of pain erupting from the shadows cloaking over the table.

"Tell me what you're feeling?" the director instructed, releasing his hand from the asset's clammy neck.

"I feel pain," the Winter Soldier told him, timidly. He couldn't suppress the invasive throb harrowed in his heart. He jerked his head to the side, his long, disheveled strands draped over his glistening blue eyes. "I feel her pain." he slurred, trying to clear his vision to focus.

"Showing emotions towards a child is a weakness that cannot be tolerated." the director affirmed, standing upright to his full height, and shaking his head as he looked down at his defective weapon. "HYDRA spent years trying to perfect you to suppress emotion and obedience. You were created execute our orders and termite the movement of resistance."

He smugly sneered, holding out his hand as an agent stepped forth and placed a metal rectangular box into his palm. "You are the nightmare that was birthed in HYDRA's shadow. The perfect assassin. A cold blooded killer. No emotion. No compassion. No reason. Nothing about you makes you remotely human. You're a weapon-A gun that is stored away until hunting season."

The Winter Soldier blanched aback; feeling the cold venom of his superiors words seep into his hollow bones. "You're an only a frail glimpse of a man. A calibrated machine. You don't need a name. Even through at one point in your worthless life, you had one, but you don't remember it. Not anymore. To HYDRA, you're our loyal pet-The Asset. And you and your little friend are going to be spending a cold and dark future together."

The director smirked, virulently. "Yes. You know understand your existence, and you will not fight."

_Surrender __or watch her die?_

Now, the Winter Soldier had become acutely aware of the heavy thumping of boots moving closer to him. He was frozen. His chin tucked down to his sternum and his hands laden over the floor. Hearing the muffled cries, he lifted his head slightly, just enough to catch a glance at her trembling underneath the flickering bulb shining over her ivory skin. Just enough to see the tears roll down her cheeks when the serum pumped into her tiny, fragile arms.

"Avora," he whimpered, soft and his voice was collapsing. "I will not fight you," he mustered up enough will power to speak in a murmur, which was unfamiliar against his tongue. He felt malady of deficiency streaming in his veins. It was a niggling sense of humanity that had been churning and prompting him to fight since he entered the room and stared at her small body strapped to the operating table. He wanted to scream, fight and break bones, but he couldn't gamble with her life. He couldn't ignore the innervation of being human. He turned, fighting against the waves of animosity flaring in him. He turned, and then glared back at the director with a malefic gleam of smelted azure and he never shifted his eyes.

Rollins ambled quietly from behind the Winter Soldier, and yanked at his arms, twisting the muscle and metal plating, and then cuffed them behind his back, disabling his wrists against reinforced titanium.

"Get up," he barked aloud, gruff and ugly. He pulled at the long strands, and forced the Asset's head up to stare at the girl once more. "That brat," he whispered lowly, his breath heated over the other man's scruffy jaw. "Is going to become my new play toy. She and I are going to have so much fun training while you're locked in the ice box." he grunted, cracking his knuckles.

"Get him out of my sight," the director ordered waving his hand with a dismissive gesture. He shuffled his feet back to the table, and patted his hand over Avora's paled shoulder. "It will be okay princess," he allayed with a fathering tone, smiling falsely down at the child. "It's almost over."

"My...Snow... Angel..." Avora choked up, tears streamed over the edges of her quivering lips. She turned her neck, and gazed at the Winter Soldier with her fearful caramel eyes. Her hand lifted up slightly, as she tried to reach out for him. The assistant took grip of her arm ruthlessly, squeezing on the frail muscle tight enough to terminate the blood circulation against the bruising flesh. "Don't forget about me..." she wheezed out, before her eyes dimmed and the effects of a serum began to arise in her blood. She drifted into an unconscious state.

His blue eyes were dark and intrepid and dismay surged through his system as he thrashed against Rollin's broad muscles locked over his torso.

Pain was still sharp in the isolated sections of his body, lingering and jolting spasms from his operations, and realignment of his bones in various spots of his ribs and shoulder blades, he gritted, viciously.

His vision swam into violent crimson. The reemergence of the Winter Soldier programming was beginning to take hold of his mind. "I will kill you of you!" he lashed out, snarling like caged wolf. His teeth bared and eyes livid, struggling against Rollins to retain movement.

"Rollins," the director snapped, firm and direct. "Take him down. I will not have this child become a witness of bloodshed."

"Let go of me!" the Winter Soldier growled to Rollins, feeling all eyes locked on him. Guns were loaded with a heavy dosage of sleeping agent.

"You're unstable, soldier." Rollins shot back, twisting his right arm, and listening to the bones crack. "You've been out of cryo for too long. It's made you defective." he snorted, cursing up his throat and scolding the situation.

"Avora," The Winter Soldier whispered, brokenly to himself. The thought of her dying on the table made his heart thud to a halt in his chest. He knew the horrors of HYDRA, he was forced to watch young girl become slaves to torture in a dark place of underground Russia-The Red Room.

He saw the corruption of the mind, and trained with a lethal red haired operative -she carried venom in her blood and destroyed her enemies, ruthless and merciless with efficient methods that were branded over her skin. She was deadly as a spider-and trapped men in her weaves of deception.

After he accomplished his final mission in Odessa before going back into reanimation stasis, he saw the agent in the mountains and pulled the trigger on his target-he missed and watched the slug enter her when she dived in front of engineer and took the bullet. He knew she wasn't dead-just wounded with a permanent reminder shaped and marred over her compromised pale skin.

Blinking the potent memory of the red-haired woman in black combat gear, the Winter Soldier tore his eyes away from the guns aimed at his chest. Something sparked within him, maybe it was the true man hidden behind the semblance of the killer or maybe it was Avora's love towards him. Whatever it was, he felt his feral strength returning,his heart pounding and searing defiance fighting the hands pinning him down.

For the first time in years, he cracked a ghostly hint of a warm, human smile. He looked at her, with his burning light blue eyes, and growled harshly, "She will have freedom." he screamed at the top of his lungs, and threw his head back. "I'll make sure of that!"

Rollins clamped his hand over the assassin's mouth from behind, barricaded the words, and ceasing the protests. The Winter Soldier bit down on his leather gloved fingers, gnashing his teeth into the bone with much force as he could muster. Rollins yelped under his breath and whipped his hand away and spewed out a jumble of curses. Seizing the opportunity of his opponent's distraction, the Soldier bashed his head into the agent's skull, hard and listened to the cartilage of his nose breaking.

He spun around, jumped a few inches off the ground, and rammed his boots into Rollin's chest, violently.

The agent fumbled backwards and collided to the ground with a loud thud; and he shifted his blue eyes to the table and with all his strength, he broke the handcuffs, allowing pieces to scatter over the floor. He moved quickly, vaulting and flipping over tables, and bashing heads until his feet smacked on a steel crate, and head lowered. He glared at the director with murderous indent, and seethed in Russian, "She is coming with me..."

The director nodded, gesturing to hostile "Okay. Take her. You won't get far." he warned, hiding a twisted smirk.

The Winter Soldier scuffed at his words, and jumped off the crate, and landed gracefully at the table side, and caressed Avora's small hand with his metal fingers. He wanted to hear her voice again. "Avora," he whispered, bringing her limp hand to his face, pressing his lips atop of her knuckles. He held a kiss there, feeling her veins pulse against the softness of his warm, trembling mouth.

Seconds later, he heard a defeating sound of a gun sounding off, and saw splotches of blood painting over the floor. His hand collided with the floor and he could only thrash and growl as his right arm suddenly grew numb. He had been shot.

"You have disappointed me, soldier," snarled the director, he reached down and tangled his hand into the Winter Soldier's long hair, and rammed his face into the floor, hard enough to make him expel out, dark red that had replaced saliva.

He tugged on the long stands hard, bringing the young man's head up, before slamming his forehead back into the floor again. "You are going back into the chair and your mind will be wiped clean. I will go so deep that you won't even remember how to talk."

The Winter Soldier lifted his metal hand, trying to grasp Avora's arm. "No, she needs me..."he coughed, his body was dragged over the floor and right arm throbbed as the bullet sunk deeper into the tensed muscle of his bicep, "I made a promise. A promise!" he managed to growl out a strangled breath, his voice fading as he felt his body being hauled up and strapped into the steel, electronic probing chair, before he cried out erratic bursts of pain.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

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><p>There was no warmth blanketing the dimly lit room, Madame HYDRA rigidly leaned her slender frame against the wooden door with no flush of contentment tinged on her paled and cut-stone cheekbones. She crossed her leather heeled boots ankle to ankle as she stood motionless and patient.<p>

Her long green eyes draped over her trim shoulders as she shot a forward and intense glower at the dark figure sitting at the table across from her view-Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker.

His chiseled features veiled by shadow as he settled a glass of red wine on the flawless mahogany. He gave her total disregard, rejection. It unnerved her. Tensing out a breath, Madame HYDRA stiffened her lips into a grimace of displeasure she kept her cold eyes trained on him and began her report.

"I have done research on the files you have been keeping hidden from my eyes, but I hold not regression towards your methods when it comes to getting satisfied results." she digressed with an unsavory voice. "Little girls that are alone in this world become the most ambitious and most aggressive ...That child holds our redemption for failing HYDRA. She will live, die and live again. There will be no exceptions of having a good life. Her life has already been coded since the moment her worthless mother conceived."

Strucker had killed so many people. Stories had been written in his victim's blood which he smeared on the crumbling walls. His methods of interrogated were brutal-broken necks, crashed ribs and slit throats. Even though he dressed formal and elegant in her presence, she sensed his nefarious and carnal nature; he wasn't afraid to show it to his captives. He revealed no sentiment.

Their eyes met, a hard an unforgiving steel-gray that seemed to penetrate through her layers. "You realize what is necessary to do now my dear," he said twisting his lips into a smug grin. "Everything must entwine. We can have no more loose threads. As a former benefactor of the Schutzstaffel I have watched orphaned children become monsters overnight. All it takes is simple bargain for their freedom and they obey have command that pours out from your mouth." he addressed coldly, squeezed his leather fingers into a tight gloved fist. "They are primitive creatures with young minds...Children sometimes become the most deadly weapons when used with the right motivation. I have had quite a few encounters with reckless children who became witnesses of their own parents' murders when HYDRA had to level a few towns in order to recreate our imperium. After all it was I you gave you a new life in the high ranks as our newest lieutenant."

"How could I forget your compassion towards my life, Herr Strucker." Madame HYDRA returned through clenched teeth, and then clicked her spiked heels fervently towards the table, and then flipped opened the front of brown file with fluttered of stained paper.

"When Zola replicated the formula that supposed to have been extracted from Captain America's veins to create to evolution of super-soldiers, it meant failure. We were unable to retrain the American soldier in our prisons, but we tested the new compound that our doctor created by the stolen notes and samples that our agents collected back in Brooklyn. One the months passed, all those men became mutated and destroyed-abominations from muscle growth that tore their bodies apart. The others disagreed with the serum and their weak immune systems rejected the poison and killed them. I was there watching their internal organs burst -heart attacks, strokes suffocation." she paused, and cuffed her hands behind her back, drawing in her boots close together.

"With our failures HYDRA we were able to reach success when the Soviets gave us funding for the experiments. In result with our alliance to Russia, they gave us a gift -You remember...The young American soldier who followed Captain America around. The one asset we both shared when his mutilated body was dragged out the icy ravine. Zola operated on him, sawed off the marred bones of his left arm and injected with the new batch of serum. He was the first of many to become perfected in the eyes of our family, but he wasn't worthy to carry on the mantle of HYDRA, no, only a blood heir could have that rite to control the ideals left by our deceased leader." she growled vehemently up her throat.

Dragging her long nails against the wood, she had resumed in her conversation with arrogant and ruthless former Nazi trapped in her daunting gaze of molten green. "We need to talk about the heir of our leader and the extraction of her diseased and imperfect blood that carries the essence of her mother. We have already begun the cleansing procedures, blood draining and injections, but she will have her mind erased within the next few days before we ship her off to the old ruins of Castle Zemo."

There was a piece of paper inserted with a small note in German clipped over a photograph of a young Russian girl, gentle brown eyes filled with security and warmth; long and curly golden hair that cascaded over her shoulder, and her face was pale with dark blemishes of abuse smudged over her cheeks. She had been condemned to live in the shadows, and raise her children under the run. Russian was only half of her existence; her father was born in Moscow, but her mother Gisela was born in a darkness of Germany-an orphaned street girl raised in the void of hatred and poverty. She was marked as a slave when the men in black coats scarred her left arm with a forbidden symbol that etched red over the ivory skin, and branded her as a prize to the senseless and inhuman leader of a terrorist organization called HYDRA. The equalizer of human weakness and order.

Corrupted to serve her master, the young girl became his object of desire. Gisela obeyed every command he spoke, and didn't flinch when his black leather gloved hands caressed over her scarred arms. It was enslavement, and she had become bounded to his words and orders. After months of being locked in an isolated chamber, with little light to remind her that she wasn't a captive in hell; Gisela had conceived an heir that shared his bloodline and altered DNA strands that constructed merciless power.

After the leader was murdered by an American soldier who was stronger and noble, and saved the world from leveled desolation; she escaped on the train with liberated and wounded Russian soldiers, erased her identity, and married a farmer before she gave birth to her baby girl -Alanta.

"Do you remember the night we recovered what rightfully belong to us?" Madame HYDRA issued, coldly, pulling out a torn photography of a small infant. "When we heard of the news of Gisela giving birth to a healthy daughter...We weren't so merciful and instead leaving a parting gift during that special time, we gave her something else to make her remember who pulled the strings..."

_It had been a cold, unforgiving and harsh December night; a masked assassin clothed in black invaded their home. He was silent with his attack, his methods elusive, and his eyes, a ghostly blue without emotion or humanity. He was a programmed drone for HYDRA, a face of terror and darkness, and a symbol of death. It was a terrifying moment, Gisela had felt like a little rabbit ensnared in the intense gaze of a hungry wolf._

_He never let her breathe when as held her three-month baby girl in her arms, shielding her tiny form from a metal hand reaching to grab the wailing baby. She knew he was ordered by the last remaining superiors of HYDRA, and his objective was her daughter. The assassin wrapped his metal hand around her throat, squeezing until her youthful features changed into a hue of faint purple. She tried to fight, clawing at his against with her free hand; but he managed to cut off her airways, and twist the bones into her neck. And with a violent crack; he fractured and dislocated the bones, and listened to her wheeze out fading breaths._

_"Leave my daughter alone." Gislea pleaded, struggling to muster out a few words as she looked into his icy blue eyes obscured by disheveled brown hair. His wore the semblance of a young man; his menacing face was chiseled and shrouded with confusion. She choked out another breath. "Her life is precious and doesn't belong to HYDRA. She deserves freedom...Freedom."_

_"Freedom?" he questioned, unsure of the word as it ragged up his strained throat. His pale blue eyes suddenly became distant, and his fingers unclasped from her bruised neck._

_He released his choke hold, and watched her eyes roll back into their sockets. She died before her body impacted the floor; the baby slipped out from the laden arm, but he scooped up the distressed child, and looked down at the life withering in his arms. He blinked, and just stared at the baby. His lips hinged shut, and his eyes scanned the room, as the doors opened and his superior marched over hardwood, and he automatically handed the baby into the man's extended arms, gently, and then returned intrepidly back into the shadows._

Sneering as the grim memory dissolved in her mind, Madame HYDRA swiped a glass wine, and delicately took a sip. "The Winter Soldier has proven to us many times that his loyalty lies within the heart of the HYDRA. He isn't weak or defective like the others who had failed to reach our goals of reformation." She halted in her words. It brought her to a pause. Pause. A moment of thoughtless control of emotion. A falter in her system. A hint of teetering closer to the edge. "Our asset has shown soon the breakage of his emotional barriers with the child. She feels security with him...I know that they both share a connection. She has disrupted Soldier's tolerance for human weakness."

"Weakness is necessary when evolving humanity to new order." Stucker's hoarse German accent encroached around her. The Baron rose from his seat, and hauntingly advanced closer to her. His face was still hidden, but a gleam of his glass monoclonal reflected against the flickers of firelight. He spoke once more to her, with a hint of spite ragging from his throat. "The child must not be considered an asset to us, but a blood miracle."

Madame HYDRA glared at him, jaw tensing. She couldn't contain her bottled up disgust. "What is your command? Do we remove the child from this place and allow her to avoid the final stages of her rebirth? Do we send her to Castle Zemo where she will be trained as a young operative recruit?" she growled, leveling her inscrutable glower at him. "What is your decision?" she snapped back.

"Assimilation." he replied calmly, grinning amusingly at her. "The girl must learn obedience before training. We need to wipe her and erase the images of her family. That is the only way she can fully respond to our commands." He shuffled his feet, and placed his gloved hand atop of the folder. "It is a method of discipline, but once we have removed her existence and her willpower has been broken, then she will be completely ours to control."

Madame HYDRA returned with a curt of nod, as she turned to leave. She glanced over her shoulder and regally issued out her response, "As you command, Herr Stucker."

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><p>A dark line of maroon trickled over his full lips. He felt every slap against his rugged and ashen skin. Every slash of hardened rage penetrate through his bones. It was a method of torture, pure and effective, and it was brutal and unrelenting.<p>

His body jostled against the pounding impact of gloved hands embedding into his jaw. He was lost in the weaves of hatred. His murky vision flared hot crimson underneath his tensed eyelids; trying to back while blood smeared over his lips and contrasting the ivory hue of his blemished skin; trickling aimlessly down his throat until the trail reached the graven muscles of his heaving chest. A myriad of straggly patterns lanced over his crescent scars, burning the fading marred wounds with sickening warmth.

His lungs collapsed as jolts of thrones of tantalizing pain spread in his system like live wire. It felt like the veins underneath his tightening knuckles melted through the skin. He swallowed and trembled against the hard chair, the coldness of steel from a gun caressed over his pulsing temple, brushing the matted strands of his brown hair back as he caught the familiar and encroaching whiff of lead.

_Long Island USA,__ December 1991_

_Snow cascaded over the ice slick streets. The distance glow of sunlight reflected over the vacant windows. It had become unexpected and unforgiving white out. Inside a black Mercedes sedan, Howard Stark gripped the steer wheel firmly, his dark brown eyes focused on the road ahead. His skin grew clammy underneath his leather gloves as the car drove pass heaps of snow barricading the sidewalks. Given the proper traction on the tires, he easily broke through the white curtain of heavy flakes._

_He was barely conversing with his wife sitting in the passenger seat, telling him about the awards their son Tony received, but he was a captive of the dark secrets lodged in his heart. He felt the harrowing sense of danger crawling in the marrow of his bones. Inside the trunk was a prototype instrument he designed for one single purpose. It was tracking beckon, a device to found someone lost and buried in the frozen wasteland of subzero temperatures. His life's work was all configured into the small piece, because he made a promise to a friend. He intended to keep that promise._

_He was barely focused, smiling at her words, and pretending to listen. The windshield wipers had grown to become a distraction, but his wife's voice lulled him to take his eyes off the road for a second when she interrupted his concentration._

_"Howard, darling, are you even listening to a single word I am telling you?"_

_He nodded, curtly, "I am very proud of Tony." he answered, simply with a faint smile. "It won't be long until he's running the show..."_

_"Howard honey is everything alright?" she asked, concern gleamed in her eyes. The spotlight turned red. The brakes screeched over the layer of snow. It as an impasse, tension was growing thick in the air between them. "Darling what is it?"_

_Howard opened his mouth to answer her, his dark eyes focused ahead and fingers clutched the steering well. He took a moment to reconsider his choice of words, but he knew that wasn't much time to give her the full explanation... He sighed, "I have been working on a new project. Classified. It will ensure a better future for Tony. There is nothing more I want for him than that, Maria." He swallowed down hard, "I made a blueprint of an instrument to help our friends in the shadows find hope again, but as long as this idea is kept hidden I fear that HYDRA will strike at us."_

_Maria furrowed her eyebrows, "HYDRA is dead, Howard. Agent Carter told me that the former members no longer exist. We raked everything from the marked locations. There was nothing left for us to recover."_

_"That is what scares me, Maria." He countered, feeling the blood flow in his fingers stop against the brush of coldness. "This instrument in the wrong hands could destroy humanity if it becomes used in the wrong hands. We need to keep everything underground and leave Tony in the dark about my mistakes."_

_He tore his eyes from the stoplight vigil and frowned as he met her gaze. "I'm sending you and our son away from Long Island until I know that everything is secure-"_

_"Howard?"_

_Without a second, Howard felt his heart thud to a complete stop against his chest. He hitched out a breath, and feel into a trance as a tall, dark and hooded figure emerged from the curtains of fleck white. It was phantasm of winter, but he tell it was a man stalking methodically closer to the vehicle's range, and then the man stopped a few feet away from the stoplight, and held a rocket launcher, angling the muzzle with the car-with no time to brace for the bullet, Howard interlocked his fingers with Maria's dainty hand, and said his silent prayers._

_The weapon sounded off with a loud 'CHOOM' and the car exploded into roaring flames. Metal and bone melted as screams erupted from the violent inferno. The ghost stood there, watching the destruction consume everything in his obscured pale blue eyes. He didn't budge a muscle, it was almost like he had become frozen and immunized to watching shards of glass rain over the pavement and the scent of charred flesh permeated the air. His long leather coat billowed in the snow squalls, and he moved slowly to his target. His wolfish glower revealed to sentiment to the victims encased with flames._

_For a long moment of listening to the screeching metal framework of the vehicle combustion; he maneuvered to the back, and rammed a gloved fist into the fogged glass, metal fingers coiled with the graphite tube and he looked at the damage he caused, his blue eyes vacant without emotion, dark strands of hair twirled against his forehead, as he recoiled his hand aback, and lifted the prize of his master out of the blaze._

_His eyes narrowed slightly, as he breathed against the hard muzzle styled mask covering the lower half of his face. He stared, just stared at the skeletons of Howard and Maria Stark. He flesh hand tried to reach for the bodies, he wanted to touch the molten flesh because he sensed that he knew the driver, but then he received his orders to return to his master._

_Turning around, his combat boots crunched over the glass, and he stuffed the tube case inside his coat, and vanished into the snowfall._

_He never looked back._

_TBC..._


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

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><p><em>Moscow, Russia, December 23rd <em>

_He never listened to them. He didn't want to interfere with the conversions of his superiors. He could've killed them all if he wanted to. It was tempting as he trained his pale blue eyes on Baron Wolfgang Strucker standing behind the desk in the vast room with triangular shaped windows streaming gray light over the metal beams craved into the hollow walls. The man was sadistic and mortally insane. He believed in evolution of humanity and was optimist when it came do dividing the balance of order and chaos. His bloodline was German and purified for HYDRA. Before he had accepted the chance to restore his own failures with the alliance of Red Skull, he was trained with the SS and observed the weakness of his prisoners. He was ruthless and hungry for true power. His disturbing train of thought could wrench any man's heart. His mind worked like an interface programmed, with every detail cut into halves for detecting truth._

_It had been a method he used during the interrogation sessions, an instrument of death that harbored the weaken victims of his brutality to stare into his deaden gray eyes when he pulled the trigger. His name was engraved in the lifeless corpses he tossed into the flames and erased their existence as the smoke cleared from the skies. Death was his purpose, making deals with demons in moral flesh granted him power over the ranks, however, to earn respect for his leader, he had to cut a few strings, fill a few bodies with lead, not his prisoners, but men he once considered comrades during his elusive operations in the shadows._

_The Winter Soldier never questioned Strucker. He delivered the instrument he retrieved from the car wreckage, and moved in hushed and mechanical strides to the window. He leaned his intimating stature against the glass, arms folded and eyes narrowed. Two men in white coats and black leather boots stood in front of the desk, sweat dotted their brows when they each stole a glance at the motionless assassin's shadow darkening over the granite floor. He flicked his eyes up, glinting with unnerved intensity, light reflected in his blue irises, mirroring their wary gazes with ice as his jaw set into a sharp clenched. He never spoke to the scientists, Strucker's pack of fumbling and controlled lab rats were always timid around his presence. One look of his changeless blue eyes left them haunted, he knew how to penetrate deep within them, and make their hearts shutter. He was the lone wolf and they were just scavengers, feeding off of scraps he left behind for them. He straightens his posture up at bit, and smirked darkly. He listened to his superior's iniquitous voice, glancing at his commander flipping through documents scattered over the desk._

_"Impressive," Strucker said. He lifted up the tube case into the clutch of his gloved hands, and smirk twisted his lips as he took a step back. He appraised the work of the assassin sternly. Another moment passed as he tapped his fingers absently over the case. A slew of his arm suddenly cloaked over the item protecting it from the caress of daylight. "The situation overseas is about to endure changes than anyone has never anticipated. They were on the verge of recovering ancient relics. I've cursed them a dozen times for interfering with our future. Now, we will have the advantage of leveling their systems and rebuilding the world in our image." He twisted the cap off, and carefully slid out the roll of blueprints. His eyes lowered as he scanned the details fervently, mumbling coherent words in German, calculating the equations racking in his disciplined mind. "Our sources have sent information regarding the known location of the wreckage. Once Stark's instrument is constructed, it will create new order."_

_"The body has encased in the icy waters for years, how will we restore the damaged tissue?" One of the scientists asked. He was concerned with the aftermath of the discovery. "No flesh can withstand that degree of cold-"_

_"You are forgetting about what stands in front of you, doctor." Struker responded, and he vaguely gestured at his hand to the Winter Soldier. "Recreation always restores the weak. Armin Zola perfected the serum after countless procedures with test subjects. Failures to the name of HYDRA. Instead of storing his knowledge, he created a perfected substance that shared the same formula that was meant to by ours, if certain loose ends didn't escape from our eyes. No matter, we developed new weapons with each injection. Some men died horrible deaths in the operating room, but one good soldier withstood all the pain, injections and became submissive to us without the escalation of his defiance... The young man was butchered; mind altered into a programmed machine, which of course Zola rewired with the stages of mind swiping. I don't think people feel comfortable around here, knowing that we have a ghost looming in the shadows. He is perfection. His body had withstand the cold because of all he is called the Winter Soldier."_

_What he just spoke was degrading to hear. The tension in the room was a choking haze tightening in his throat; HYDRA treated him like a puppet. The Winter Soldier lowered his arms to his sides, the mechanical and screeching noises of the shifting plates made the men in white shiver as an eerie chill permeated in the dead space between them. Despondent the firm set of his broad jaw and hard look in his paled eyes displayed a simple indication of his unpredictable and carnal nature. One scientist spoke trying to ease the dangerous aura pulsating from the ghostly figure trapped in his unsettling gaze. "If your super-soldier is perfection why do you need the other one to be extracted from the ice?"_

_Strucker looked at him. He sense the resistance in the other man well enough to detect the uncertainty welled in his brown eyes. "Let me tell you a story that mother told me back in the old country. It's about risk and death." He descended haughtily from the steps, nearing the man that questioned his ambitious mind._

_"There were two birds sitting on a branch, both of them were strong and fearless...Brothers." he snickered, with a devilish gleam in his gray eyes. "Then, a cat climbed up the tree, a threat to their lives. One fought the cat off, pecking and clawing at the creature's face, but the cat was clever and swiped its paw at the bird, breaking its left wing. The other bird attack with defense, shielding his wounded brother, only to have his right wing broken. The cat knew their weakness, and went in for the kill-but the birds put up a fight and in the end they all fell out of the tree."_

_"What is the meaning of that story?" the other scientist asked, shifting uncomfortable under the Winter Soldier's daunting gaze._

_"It is a simple answer," Strucker said, lowering his hand to his side, and rubbing a finger over his sidearm. "The birds represent order and nobility... While the cat is chaos. When each fight a battle on the high level of power, the end results become deadly, but cats always land on their feet." he chimed, quickly removing his pistol, and aiming the muzzle at the scientist ."It's a story that doesn't make sense of logic, but I like to use it as a distraction before I pull the trigger. It also helps me erase certain errors. The world is collapsing into spiraling void of chaos, and if hope is lost and it became a very dark place."_

_"So why do you need the America soldier?" the other man questioned, his eyes locked on the gun as he almost swallowed his tongue._

_"That is a good question," Strucker said, he stiffened his jaw and undid the safe lock of his gun. "Imagine all the enemies lives we can lid once we change up the mind of America's hero; both him and our friend over there," he pointed to the Winter Soldier. "They both served in the Armed Forces together. Best friends since childhood, but sadly our toy soldier has no recognition of his past. According to Zola's notes, he doesn't even know the name written on his dog tags; including his date of birth. He is a nameless man, hollow and obedient to my commands. A loyal attack dog, who fetches what I order him to retrieve. He never questions, no, he just obeys."_

_He snapped his fingers, and the brainwashed assassin responded, advancing down the steps, his broad expanse of armored shoulders rolled as he thumped his heavy boots, with an intimating swagger, and then stood at Strucker's right side. "Very good, Solider," he gave the younger man a pleasing nod. "Now, I want you to kill the man who has defiled HYDRA." He placed his gun into the metal hand, and pushed down on the fingers, enclosing them over the weapon. "One bullet in the head, and another in the chest. You have ten seconds."_

_"Wait-"_

_The Winter Soldier lifted his bionic arm, chrome alloy glared in his target's eyes, and he pulled back on the trigger, discharging the bullet. His blue eyes became suddenly unhinged with a ghoulish stare, and he watched the bullet enter into the man's forehead, just staring at the line of blood dripping from the bridge of his nose, and lips. The other man jumped a few steps back in a sharp gasp, the Soviet assassin, smirked d ominously, a murderous scowl became a semblance over his chiseled face, and his eyes hardened with morbid satisfaction of his kill. With another clap of thunder ripped through the deafening silence in the air and the body was struck with a bullet in the left side of the chest._

_He looked at the lifeless body, his eyes dense and vacant, staring at the splotch of red leaking through the white lab coat. "Enough," Strucker ordered from behind him. The rattled and alive scientist shook in his boots, clamping his hand over his mouth and he tore his eyes away from the Winter Soldier to watch his friend's eyes roll into their sockets. The Baron tossed the tube case to the floor and shook his head. He glowered at the corpse with coldness in his gaze. "Remove the body and get to work." He pointed a gloved finger at the blueprints. "No mistakes this time. Unless you want to stare at your wife's grave."_

_The Winter Soldier took a step back, the tension heated his body. The scientist glared at Strucker, the German commander disregarded him with a threat welled in his gray eyes. "I want everything ready for the extraction. Remove all lingering failures." He ordered with a bit in his harsh tone. The man grimaced and placed his hand over the glazed eyes of his friend. The Baron smirked, cuffing his hands behind his back. "Imagine having two guns in the hands of HYDRA. So many things will be rectified on American shores." He turned, and looked at the voiceless assassin; gun was still smoking in his metal hand. "You never fail to disappoint me...You can speak now."_

_"What is your command, Herr Strucker?" the Winter Soldier spoke, his raspy voice cracked, with ting of soft Russian ghosting from his neutral held lips. He stood straight, frozen as if he was suddenly turned into stone. His eyes looked forward, and jaw flexed when he caught a whiff of the spilled blood draining from the body in front of him. He never budged a muscle, unblinking and strictly pliant under his master's glare. He had been subjected to torture, his mind scarred with the high voltage they gave him before he had a chance to recover olden images of his past. He waited for orders, and carried each one out without a reason to question his inhumane masters of authority._

_Struker leveled his eyes on the body with disgust written on his face, "Dispose this filth and report back to me. I have a new assignment for you. I want you to recover something for me in Odessa."_

_Listening to the spitefulness escalate in Strucker's sordid voice, obliged to follow his instructions, the Winter Soldier nodded quietly, "As you command, Herr Strucker." he responded with a blank expression, and in a swift motion, he advanced to the body, his boots created ripples in the pool of blood. The disheveled and paled faced scientist lurched back in terror, as he reached down his silver arm, grappling the neck of the corpse and started to drag the body across the floor and towards the doors._

_"You're a human!" he screamed, enthralling the assassin to jerk in movement. The phantasmal shell of a man turned, and glared over his shoulder, darkened blue eyes held malice, and brown tresses veiled his emotionless face... "You have soul...A soul!"_

_"No...I don't." he snarled coldly, curling his lips into a viscous sneer, and continued his trek out of the room while leaving a blood trail._

_A cold, and frightful chill swept through the room as the door slammed the moment he had disappeared into the shadows._

_The scientist lowered his head in reverence for his friend and the butchered soul he'd watched pulled the trigger. "What is in Odessa?" he had to ask, dreading to listen to the answer escape from Strucker's lips._

_The Baron hollowly reprimand, his words filled with empathy, "An engineer who owes HYDRA a debt."_

_TBC..._


End file.
